Open invitation - 'On the Urgency of Old Ideas' a workshop at IAS CEU

On the Urgency of Old Ideas - open invitation to a workshop at IAS CEU

June 5, 2025

On the Urgency of Old Ideas  

A Counter-Disciplinary Workshop on Theory and Method

 Budapest, Central European University

This workshop begins with two assertions: first, that the study of ideas in history is an increasingly urgent tool for addressing pressing questions of the present; and second, that the moment is ripe for reassessing the methods we employ when studying these historically situated ideas. The workshop will bring together scholars from multiple disciplinary backgrounds, in order to share, question, and clarify the theoretical stakes of methodological approaches that are often taken for granted and kept within the bounds of one or another discipline. 

Some participants will have been trained in the classic methodological works on the history of concepts and ideas, while others employ methods taken from anthropology, literary theory, cultural studies, philosophy, and other disciplines. While we have been involved in shared intellectual discussion relating to ideas in history, we have not always had the chance to share insights and provocations regarding the methods we employ and the reasons we employ them. This workshop will be a space for discussion that should enable each of us to ask others, and then ourselves, how and why we do what we do, as we confront a bleak present with ideas from the past.

Participants are asked to prepare 10-minute presentations reflecting on the methods they employ and on the advantages and challenges posed by these methods. These short presentations will be followed by ample time for discussions, which is the main emphasis of the workshop. Participants should explain and analyze the methods they discuss, without assuming shared knowledge of one or another approach, but presentations should not be seen as formal papers about specific authors or classical works of methodology. Rather, presentations should be geared toward provoking discussion in which participants can work out their own methods and their own theoretical justifications what they do. 

 For those interested in presenting: send a proposed title and a short description (25–100 words) of your proposed presentation to FeinbergJ@ceu.edu.

For those interested in attending without a presentation, please RSVP to FeinbergJ@ceu.edu and BendikAg@ceu.edu.  

Image: Jusepe de Ribera, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons