In Theory: The JHI Blog Podcast

In Theory is the podcast of the Journal of the History of Ideas blog. The hosts of the JHI Blog team interview intellectual scholars in the fields of philosophy, literature, art history, natural and social sciences, religion, and political thought about their latest books and works. The aim of the JHI podcast is to highlight the huge diversity of intellectual history at university departments across the world.

In Theory: The JHI Blog Podcast is a history podcast hosted by JHIdeas, with 74 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

JHIdeas hosts In Theory: The JHI Blog Podcast, a history show with 74 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

• 

  In Theory: The JHI Blog Podcast

  Labors of Division: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Navyug Gill

  Aug 5, 202656 min

  For this episode of the In Theory podcast, Navyug Gill speaks with Disha Karnad Jani about his book Labors of Division: Global Capitalism and the Emergence of the Peasant in Colonial Panjab (Stanford University Press, 2024) and how it critically reexamines the history of the category of “the peasant” vis-à-vis the political, economic, and social transformations that occurred in colonial Panjab during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As a result, their conversation touches on a variety of questions relevant not only to scholars of South Asian or British colonial history, but to all those invested in histories of capitalism and comparative intellectual history writ large. How, for instance, do different kinds of categories become commensurable across wide-ranging contexts and histories? How and why does attending to the historical division of labor and agriculture help us better understand forms of social difference that emerge out of, say, religion and caste? How might one continue to ask new and “defamiliarizing” questions of a familiar set of archives?

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  In Theory: The JHI Blog Podcast

  Radical Sovereignty: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Tony Wood

  Jun 30, 20261h 13m

  How did a pan-continental vision of “Latin America” emerge and intersect with changing ideas of the nation-state among leftists in Latin America in the interwar years? What impact did the Mexican Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution have on the aspirational visions and political projects of social transformation within the region? How does one conceptualize and, subsequently, write a transnational history about a category like the “radical”? Tony Wood addresses these questions, and others, in this conversation with Disha Karnad Jani about his latest book Radical Sovereignty: Debating Race, Nation, and Empire in Interwar Latin America (University of California Press, 2025), which examines the history of ideas about race, anti-imperialism, indigeneity, the state, and sovereignty in Latin America during the early twentieth century.

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  In Theory: The JHI Blog Podcast

  Teaching Gender: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Samuel Rutherford

  May 28, 20261h 8m

  Samuel Rutherford—a Lecturer in LGBTQ+ History and the History of Sexuality at the University of Glasgow and a founding editor of the JHI Blog—returns to the Blog to speak with Disha Karnad Jani about his book Teaching Gender: The British University and the Rise of Heterosexuality, 1860–1939 (2025). In this conversation, Rutherford discusses how English and Scottish colleges and universities from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century contributed to the construction of gender and sexual identities in modern Britain. And, in discussing this history, Rutherford also addresses attendant questions about the “theoretical imperatives” that undergird this work, the disciplinary flexibility required for such a study, and more.

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  In Theory: The JHI Blog Podcast

  Vulgar Marxism: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Edward Baring

  Apr 28, 202657 minS0

  In this interview with Disha Karnad Jani for the In Theory podcast, Edward Baring returns to the JHI Blog to offer another discussion of his most recent work, Vulgar Marxism: Revolutionary Politics and the Dilemmas of Worker Education, 1891–1931 (2025). Their conversation covers the book’s main focus on “vulgar Marxism” and how this idea serves as a unique entry point into understanding the relationship between Marxist theory and the practice of worker education throughout the early-to-mid twentieth century. This conversation also provides a new perspective on, and further texture to, the numerous questions and critical insights raised by the book (from whether...

  ListenShow Notes
• 

  In Theory: The JHI Blog Podcast

  Radical Democracy in Modern Indian Political Thought: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Tejas Parasher

  Apr 22, 20261h 21mS0

  On this episode of In Theory, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Tejas Parasher about his first book, Radical Democracy in Modern Indian Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2023). In this work, Parasher incorporates, but also looks beyond, the conventional cast of activists and thinkers who proved pivotal to the anticolonial struggle in India during the twentieth century. And, in so doing, he uncovers a set of alternative visions of a post-colonial future, informed by a radical investment in participatory popular sovereignty and less beholden to the boundaries of the nation-state. While their conversation focuses on "this counter-tradition of democratic politics," Karnad Jani and P...

  ListenShow Notes

Based on semantic analysis of episode topics and host coverage, this show is a strong guest fit for executives in:

Industry fit is computed by PitchCentric using vector embeddings of the show's episode catalog.