Now online! A book forum collection on "Iran and French Orientalism: Persia in the Literary Culture of Nineteenth-Century France" (Tauris & Co, 2025) by @ritorneropoeta.bsky.social. In time the forum will emerge as a print issue - do see her thread on the contributions below ⤵️
Published! "[My work has been] in dialogue with two powerful minds, Quentin Skinner and István Hont... Over those six decades, I have made two discoveries that I still think really matter". Read the autobiographical reflections of John Dunn here (open access): www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
I was very happy to be part of this special issue on Julia's wonderful book, which I used as an opportunity to reflect on the broader history of Persian literature in Europe and the limits of viewing translation and literary history through a national lens.
The cover of the book
Now online! Samuel Harrison @samharrison1812.bsky.social (Fondazione 1563) reviews "Réflexions sur le despotisme impérial de la Russie" (@editionspayot.bsky.social, 2025) by Sabine Dullin www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Now online! A book forum collection on "Iran and French Orientalism: Persia in the Literary Culture of Nineteenth-Century France" (Tauris & Co, 2025) by @ritorneropoeta.bsky.social. In time the forum will emerge as a print issue - do see her thread on the contributions below ⤵️
A photo of Dunn from 1966
An image of the first page of Dunn's article available via the link
Now online and open access! An autobiographical essay by John Dunn (Cambridge) entitled "The History of Political Thought as Window on the World" @global-ih.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
More review sections! Nice to be able to follow up on my book launch talk with a write-up for @global-ih.bsky.social — all thanks to Eddie Hughes who put this together.
It was so intellectually rewarding to work with @global-ih.bsky.social on a special section on my book! The essays by @paulbabinski.bsky.social and @drjoeford.bsky.social extended the reflection temporally, while @saraharens.bsky.social and Richard Hibbitt made me reflect on my critical method.
For @global-ih.bsky.social I reviewed Sabine Dullin's new book on the history of Russian despotism. I argue that she offers a valuable insight into the dynamics that produced the latest bout of Russian imperialism in Ukraine, but that we have to apply some of the same lessons to the West as well:
Political theorists and liberal states have reified “democracy” into a platitude, even as it breeds cynicism in the face of deepening inequality and ecological crisis. Our article of the week explores whether democracy can be saved.
By John Dunn in @global-ih.bsky.social
buff.ly/kfEwHCP
"It is too late to ask who will educate the educators. At this point we must educate ourselves together and heed the lessons of that education or we must and will die - not just each of us one by one, as we were always fated to do, but soon enough all of us and for ever"
Nineteenth-century painting by Philipp Foltz depicting the Athenian politician Pericles delivering his famous funeral oration in front of the Assembly.
Now out in OA: "Can Democracy be Rehabilitated?" by John Dunn (@thecambridgeschool.bsky.social): "[It] will be a heroic challenge... The stakes in meeting it are the possibility of democracy itself, a citizenry that has recovered the capacity to keep itself free" www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10....
The cover of the book. An image of soldiers carrying paintings is visible in the bottom part of the cover.
Now online! Johan Hjelte (Gothenburg) reviews "The Art of Status: Looted Treasures and the Global Politics of Restitution" by @jelenasubotic.bsky.social (@academic.oup.com, 2025) www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
We were very happy to facilitate this forum on "Erased: A History of International Thought Without Men" by Patricia Owens @whitproject.bsky.social. In due course, the collection will emerge as a print special issue. Huge thanks to all the contributors!
Global Intellectual History @global-ih.bsky.social organsied a Special Issue on Erased, including a reply. I'm so grateful to Helen M. Kinsella, Joseph MacKay, Christine Sylvester, Immi Tallgren, and Tarak Barkawi for their commentaries. Links to each below...
The cover of the book that features a photo of Martinu sitting beside a piano in suit and tie with a cigarette
Online! Elena Yi-Jia Zeng (@kingscollegelondon.bsky.social) reviews "Martinů and His World" (@uchicagopress.bsky.social, 2025), edited by Aleš Březina and Michael Beckerman, a collection of essays and documents illuminating the work of Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959) www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
What is planetary politics? My short essay is now published in Global Perspectives, in a really interesting forum.
@ucpress
doi.org/10.1525/gp.2...
6/6 [...] Writing the article as part of a special issue spanning several countries pushed me to draw comparative connections between Ethiopia and other monarchies in Thailand and Iran." Read the original article here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
5/6 This work was a cornerstone in the development of my forthcoming monograph on early twentieth-century Ethiopian political thought. [...]
4/6 I was interested in delineating how this anticolonial move generated its own contradictions, rigidifying Ethiopia’s internal hierarchies and setting Ethiopia aside from other African countries. [...]
3/6 The notion of an unbroken dynastic continuity was used to strengthen Ethiopia’s claims to sovereignty in history writing, public architecture, and legal texts. [...]
2/6 "This article traced the strategies through which Ethiopian leaders and intellectuals defended Ethiopia’s precarious independence in the colonial world of the early twentieth century. [...]
A quote from the below thread
1/6 Across 2025 we have posted highlights to celebrate our approaching 10th anniversary. For our final one we spoke to @saramarzagora.bsky.social (@kingscollegelondon.bsky.social), author of "Refashioning the Ethiopian Monarchy in the Twentieth Century" (2022; online 2020). Here are her thoughts:
The cover of the book
A special issue that I edited on "Erased: A History of International Thought Without Men" (2025) by Patricia Owens has gone to production – I look forward to seeing the collection published @global-ih.bsky.social! It includes five review articles and a reply article by @whitproject.bsky.social
My review article on R Bourke’s and Q Skinner’s anthology ”History in the Humanities and Social Sciences” is included in the latest issue of @global-ih.bsky.social. Open access!
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Many thanks to the editor @tomaashby.bsky.social and to the reviewer Laura André Lombard! It’s truly heartwarming to see years of work get noticed and read. Now, more than ever before, we live in dangerous times in great need of cosmopolitan republicanism.
5/5 [...] Paradoxically, however, it shows how the minorities that were the victims of these ideas also contributed to them, complicating standard accounts and demanding new frameworks." Here is the original article:
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
4/5 [...] It argues that decolonisation was defined by an “immediate” relation to sovereignty that was threatened by the apparently mediating presence and function of minorities, who were often expelled or exiled in the early post-colonial period. [...]
3/5 [...] I have since developed these arguments into a monograph provisionally titled “Vanishing Mediators: A History of Decolonisation,” which narrates that tumultuous but conceptually fertile period from the vantage point of its ostensible victims. [...]
2/5 "That article and the special issue "Refusing Minority, Recasting Islam" was an attempt to think comparatively about how minorities remade Islam in the twentieth century, usually by recourse to universalist claims." [...]