This had escaped me, but it seems that the Journal for the Academic Study of Magic has been discontinued and replaced by a new project: Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural. It sounds promising. The new journal is housed at Pennsylvania State University, but like its predecessor it’s published from Oxford, UK. They are currently accepting submissions and book review requests.
According to the website, the new journal is:
William McDougall (1871-1938): British psychologist, eugenical agitator, and professionalizer of parapsychology.
It is admittedly with some pride I notice that my very first history of science article has now been published. Since I am essentially an autodidact when it comes to history of science/science studies it was important for me to get through the peer review process of the Journal for the History of the Behavioral Sciences. Additionally, a scholarly discourse on psychical research and parapsychology has been developing on the pages of JHBS over the last few years, especially with articles by Heather Wolffram, Courtenay Grean Raia, and Sofie Lachapelle. I hope to make a modestly contribute to this developing discourse with “A nice arrangement of heterodoxies: William McDougall and the professionalization of psychical research”.
On 24 June the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) will organize a one-day workshop on alchemy in Amsterdam. Some of the top experts of alchemy will present papers, including Professor Lawrence Principe of John Hopkins University. Although the main focus is on alchemy and its ambiguous relation to early modern natural philosophy and religion, the workshop is intended for graduate and postgraduate students working with themes related to esotericism more generally. Since it coincides with the board meeting of the ESSWE, virtually all the leading scholars of western esotericism will be present, including Antoine Faivre, Wouter Hanegraaff, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Boaz Huss, Mark Sedgwick, and Gyorgy Szonyi. They will all happily engage in discussions with students and young researchers.
In short: A great opportunity if you’re doing an MA or PhD in this area, and can make it to Amsterdam in June. Another notable perk: It’s free. For more details, check out the announcement, which I also post in its entirety below.
It’s April, and Heterodoxology has survived its first month. The stats show ca. 1.300 hits in March, with posts dealing with magic, both old and new, as the most read. Perhaps not surprising, and I can reveal that there will, eventually, be more of that.
So far the strategy has been to write about topics that I teach, write or read about. I find that quite rewarding and will continue the policy, hopefully keeping the pace up with about two posts per week. I might also start writing somewhat shorter posts, and perhaps slicing up the larger ones into parts. We’ll see.
At any rate, the first month of Heterodoxology has been satisfying, and a thanks go out to those who have been following so far.
I just got home from Peter Galison’s first talk as Visiting Professor at Utrecht University. As advertised in a previous post, the lecture focused on the role of secrecy in modern science. Actually, the focus was a lot broader than that. Galison’s interest was to trace what he saw as some significant historical changes in the legitimization and enforcement of secrecy in western societies, roughly from the early 20th century until today. A significant part of his argument was that scientific discourse became subjected to secretive forms of political regulation from WWII onwards.
This has already been disseminated through other channels, but I’ll post it here anyway. My colleague Tessel Bauduin and I are organizing a panel at the next Quinquennial World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR). It’s in Toronto, it’s in August, and the title of the panel is “Seduced by Science: The culture of religion and science in the early 20th century”. We’re accepting paper proposals until April 15. See below for the details.
Next week one of the stars in the history of modern science visits Utrecht. Harvard Professor Peter Galison has written a number of highly acclaimed and original books, including How Experiments End (1987), Image and Logic (1997), and Einstein’s Clocks, Poincare’s Maps (2003). Between March 8-12 he will be delivering a series of lectures and workshops at the University of Utrecht. I will certainly be there.
As a PhD student who does research on the intersection of several strands of Western history – i.e. the history of Western esotericism, the history of science, and the history of religions – I come across a whole lot of intellectual weirdness on a daily basis. This blog is intended as a place to share some of the perplexing, bizarre, but always deeply fascinating curiosities of human thought and knowledge that I encounter. The style will be somewhere between a research blog, commenting on academic research into the undercurrents of Western intellectual history, both my own and that of others, and a place for general commentary and debate of semi-relevant issues that may arise. After all, the media is a treasure-trove of ostensibly “heterodox” religion and science these days, which may warrant the occasional comment. (more…)
Heterodoxology 