We are pleased to announce the upcoming special issue: Histories of Ignorance, with guest editors Lukas Verburgt and Peter Burke. It is scheduled to appear in the fall of 2021.
A quote from the proposal:
Our suggestion for the 2020s and beyond is that the new field of the history of knowledge should also be a history of ignorance, both of what is known in German as Unwissen (general ignorance) and Nichtwissen (ignorance of something specific). It is simply impossible to draw a sharp contrast between the production and circulation of knowledge, on the one hand, and that of ignorance, on the other hand: rather, we should study the changing and hierarchical relationship between them. What becomes clear is that the central questions standing at the heart of the history of knowledge are, in fact, questions about the connections between what is known and unknown, what is knowable and unknowable and who is deemed knowledgeable and unknowledgeable in different epochs and cultures. Both a tour d’horizon and a programmatic outline of the historical study of a highly timely topic, in science as well as in society, this agenda-setting special issue brings together a diverse group of scholars. Their contributions explore ignorance in different places and periods and from perspectives ranging from the history of science to global history and social anthropology – each emphasizing how ignorance is, and should be, central to every history of knowledge.
Posted on 03 Mar 2020
The Journal for the History of Knowledge, to be launched in 2020, includes an annual special issue, compiled by guest editors, which explores a theme central to its scope.
We are currently accepting proposals for the Fall 2021 Special Issue.
Proposals should contain the following:
Please send your proposal to all three editors:
Sven Dupré (s.g.m.dupre@uu.nl);
Ilja Nieuwland (ilja.nieuwland@huygens.knaw.nl), and
Geert Somsen (g.somsen@maastrichtuniversity.nl).
Proposal deadline: 16 December 2019
Notification of acceptance: before 29 February 2020
After submission, all manuscripts will go through a process of peer-review, author’s revisions, and copy-editing. JHoK is an Open Access journal, in principle at no charge to the authors.
Details of the journal's scope can be found here
A full list of the editorial team and advisory editorial board is available here.
Posted on 25 Sep 2019
We are delighted to announce that The History of Bureaucratic Knowledge: Global Comparisons, c. 1200 - c. 1900 has been selected as the inaugural special theme issue of the Journal for the History of Knowledge. Edited by Sebastian Felten and Christine von Oertzen, it will appear in 2020.
To quote from the proposal:
"This collective publication makes the claim that the history of bureaucracy is, at its core, a history of bureaucratic knowledge. It is therefore best studied with the methods developed to historicize scientific practices. We follow knowledge-making practices as they moved across company headquarters, government bureaus, the study, and the field. In fact, fundamental practices such as writing, calculation, and record-keeping flourished first to administer states before they were used to study nature. The entwined history of science and bureaucracy is increasingly coming into focus, as the history of science continues to broaden into the history of knowledge. Furthermore, colonial historians, anthropologists, and media scholars have come to study the epistemic power of states with approaches that are comparable to those used by historians of science. In short, our volume comes at a critical juncture in the development of disciplines that study knowledge in the past and that make these investigations relevant to current policy concerns.”
Visit the website www.journalhistoryknowledge.org to follow the publication of this issue. We expect that the call for the next special issue, to be published in 2021, will be posted in July.
Posted on 01 Jul 2019
Posted on 11 Mar 2019