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Introduction to Intellectual History: Approaches and Methods - JTB301

Title:	Introduction to Intellectual History: Approaches and Methods
Guaranteed by:	Department of Russian and East European Studies (23-KRVS)
Faculty:	Faculty of Social Sciences
Actual:	from 2025
Semester:	winter
E-Credits:	6
Examination process:	winter s.:
Hours per week, examination:	winter s.:1/1, Ex [HT]
Capacity:	22 / unknown (20)
Min. number of students:	5
4EU+:	no
Virtual mobility / capacity:	no
State of the course:	taught
Language:	English
Teaching methods:	full-time
Note:	course can be enrolled in outside the study plan enabled for web enrollment priority enrollment if the course is part of the study plan

Guarantor:	doc. Adrian Brisku, Ph.D.
Teacher(s):	doc. Adrian Brisku, Ph.D.
Class:	Courses for incoming students
Incompatibility :	JMMZ253
Pre-requisite :	JTB004, JTB006, JTB010, JTB014

WS schedule Noticeboard

Annotation

Intellectual history is an interdisciplinary subject in historical studies dealing with understanding and reconstructing various ideas, including those in political thought, as they emerge and evolve in the texts produced in their various historical contexts. The task of students and scholars of intellectual history is to engage in a reconstructive understanding of these ideas by also considering their contextual strengths and shortcomings. Each session in this course covers a different approach, highlighting different underlying questions posed, sources used, and argumentative strategies deployed.

Last update: Brisku Adrian, doc., Ph.D. (02.09.2025)

Aim of the course

The goals for this course are to engage students in reconstructive understanding of ideas by considering the latter's contextual strengths and shortcomings and to familiarise them with different approaches highlighting underlying questions posed, sources used, and argumentative strategies deployed. Crucially, it is also to enable the students to deploy such approaches in their academic writing.

Last update: Brisku Adrian, doc., Ph.D. (02.09.2025)

Course completion requirements

REQUIREMENTS

1) Attendance is mandatory as the course is designed as a seminar where substantial student participation is needed.

2) Mid-term exam in week seven with five open-ended questions based on readings from weeks 2 to 6.

3) In week 12, using a ‘workshop’ format, students present & get feedback from the lecturer and course mates on their first draft of their final paper.

4) A final paper of around 2500 words will be uploaded on Moodle with an indicated deadline.

5) Active class participation –20%, mid-term exam –30%, final paper draft (for the workshop) – 20%, final paper –30%.

COURSE EVALUTION

A – ”výborně – A” – ”excellent – A”
B – ”výborně – B” – ”excellent – B”
C – ”velmi dobře – C” – ”very good – C”
D – ”velmi dobře – D” – ”very good – D”
E – ”dobře – E” – ”good – E”
F – ”neprospěl/a – F” – ”fail – F”

For more details on the grading system, see the Dean’s provision https://www.fsv.cuni.cz/opatreni-dekanky-c-172018aj

Last updated, 2 September 2025

Last update: Brisku Adrian, doc., Ph.D. (02.09.2025)

Literature

READING ASSIGNMENTS

1. Introduction

• Syllabus.

2. What is Intellectual History?

• Peter Gordon, ‘What is Intellectual History? A Frankly Partisan Introduction to a Frequently Misunderstood Field’, pp. 1-19.

• Anthony Grafton, ‘The History of Ideas: Precept and Practice, 1950-2000 and Beyond,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 67, No. 1, 2006, pp. 1-32.

3. The Idea of History and Historicism

• Georg G. Iggers, ‘Historicism: The History and Meaning of the Term’, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 56, 1995, pp. 129-152.

• Wilhelm von Humboldt, ‘On Historian’s Task’, History and Theory, Vol. 6. No. 1, (1967), pp. 57-71.

Further reading(s)

• Michael Foucault, ‘The Deployment of Sexuality’, Part Four, in The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality 1, Penguin, 1978, pp. 75-115.

9. Martin Jay’s Synoptic Content Analysis

• Lloyd Kramer, ‘Martin Jay and the Dialectics of Intellectual History’ in Warren Breckman (eds.), Modernist Imaginations: Intellectual History and Critical Theory, New York, Berghahn Books, 2009, introductory chapter

• Samuel Moyen, ‘Imaginary Intellectual History”, in Darrin M. McMahon and Samuel Moyen (eds), Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 112-130.

10. Rethinking Intellectual History

• Dominick LaCapra, ‘Rethinking Intellectual History and Reading Texts’ in Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, pp. 23-72.

• Hayden White, Metahistory, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975, introductory chapter.

11. The ‘International Turn’ & Global Intellectual History

• David Armitage, ‘The international turn in intellectual history’, in Foundations of Modern International Thought (pp. 17-32) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). doi:10.1017/CBO9781139032940.004

· Samuel Moyen and Andrew Sartori, ‘Approaches to Global Intellectual History’ in Global Intellectual History edited by Samuel Moyen and Andrew Sartori (NY: Columbia University Press, 2013), 3-32.

12. Workshop

Last update: Brisku Adrian, doc., Ph.D. (02.09.2025)

Teaching methods

The course is seminar-based, which means that the lecturer will open up the discussion on the reading material of the week by laying out the main concepts and questions which will be followed by students' interventions and analytical discussions. The reading material will be accessible in Moodle.

Use of Generative AI Tools in This Course

• A mandatory part of the paper is a detailed statement of whether and how you used generative artificial intelligence tools (chatbots) in its preparation. If it is missing or incomplete, the paper may be considered plagiarism. Whenever you use text generated by ChatGPT or another generative artificial intelligence tool, you must indicate this in your paper and cite the tool.

• AI may only be used as a tool for obtaining and processing information, not as a means of generating entire papers or substantial parts thereof:

o You are free to use AI tools for language corrections.

o You are free to use generative AI for preparatory tasks (brainstorming and generation of ideas, search for relevant literature)

o You may not use, however, any generative AI tool for the generation of the text you are submitting as its author. That is, no part of your submitted text itself may be AI-generated.

• The student is responsible for any errors in the text, not the AI tool used. It is the student's responsibility to verify the accuracy of all generated information and sources.

• Further recommendations regarding the use of generative artificial intelligence at Charles University are available at https://ai.cuni.cz/AIEN-13.html

(• Part of the paper´s classification will consist of the evaluation of the use of AI.)

Use of generative AI tools:

The use and citation of generative AI tools (such as ChatGPT or MS Copilot) in
seminar papers and other coursework must comply with the decrees of the IMS
Director No. 7/2023 and 9/2023.
Generative AI tools may be used unless explicitly prohibited by the instructor.
However, they may not be used to generate substantial sections of the text or replace
the student’s own intellectual contribution. The student remains fully responsible for
any content generated with assistance of AI tools.
Presenting AI-generated content, whether verbatim, rephrased, or only slightly
modified, as one's own work constitutes plagiarism.
Every submitted paper must include a transparent statement specifying which
generative AI tools were used, in which stage of the work they were employed, and
how they were used, or confirming that no generative AI tools were used. If this
statement is missing or incomplete, the instructor is not permitted to accept the paper
for evaluation.
Unless the instructor explicitly prohibits the use of generative AI tools, the decision to
use or not to use them rests fully with the student. The student has the right to
request that the instructor does not use AI assistance for evaluating their work.

Last update: Brisku Adrian, doc., Ph.D. (19.01.2026)

Syllabus

Introduction to Intellectual History: Approaches and Methods (JMMZ253)

Associate Professor Adrian Brisku, PhD

Department of Russian & East European Studies, Charles University

https://cuni.academia.edu/adrianBrisku

adrian.brisku@fsv.cuni.cz

COURSE DESCRIPTION

1. Introduction

2. What is Intellectual History?

3. The Idea of History and Historicism

4. Hermeneutics and Hans Georg Gadamer

5. Historical Contextualism and the Cambridge School

6. History of Concepts (Begriffsgeschischte)

7. Mid-term Exam

8. Epistemic Order and Historical Epistemology

9. Synoptic Content Analysis and Social Imaginaries

10. Rethinking Intellectual History

11. The ‘International Turn’ and Global Intellectual History

12. Workshop

Last updated, 2.9.2025

Last update: Brisku Adrian, doc., Ph.D. (02.09.2025)