Concepta

Conceptual history is an original and innovative theoretical and methodological tool for research in the human and social sciences. It allows rethinking historical times, spaces and objects of study from heuristic perspectives focused on the transnational analysis of languages, concepts and metaphors that challenge common senses about the past and the present. The aim of this 7th CONCEPTA Iberoamerica Summer School is to introduce, relate and discuss the main approaches to conceptual history: Begriffsgeschichte, Cambridge School, Conceptual History of the Political. At the same time, the contents discussed are articulated with the aim of broadening the understanding of the dynamics and problems of the intellectual history of Latin America and the Iberian world.

On the one hand, this new edition of the CONCEPTA Iberoamerica Summer School will critically study the works of the main references in conceptual history: Reinhart Koselleck, Hans Blumenberg, J.G.A. Pocock, Quentin Skinner, Michel Foucault, Claude Lefort, Pierre Rosanvallon, together with the contributions of the Iberconceptos project. On the other hand, the perspectives of conceptual history will be linked to the exploration of utopias that shaped history, particularly that of America from the sixteenth century to the present.

Indeed, the neologism "utopia" invented in 1516 by the humanist Thomas More to refer to a non-place or the place of happiness referred to the travel chronicles published by the Florentine navigator Amerigo Vespucci, and to the attraction of discovery. Since then, utopia has spread as a literary and political genre of possible worlds presented as plausible, constitutive of modernity from the collapse of the certainties that organized the political, religious and geographical order. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Tomaso Campanella, Johann Valentin Andreäe, Francis Bacon, Bartolomé de Las Casas, Vasco de Quiroga, created diverse utopias as projects of political community from the disenchantment of the present and the expectation of a future where America and the rediscovery of classical antiquity guided the imagination.

From the disenchantment, theories on human nature and the forms of association among men also emerged as projects of autonomous institution of society, of political order and of the citizen, based on concepts that concentrated a utopian dimension: State, general will, social contract, market...Although the Atlantic revolutions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries would build their antecedents on those concepts, they would give a new impulse to utopias from problems and ideals related to the representation and regulation of society (and the critique and exploration of alternatives), which would be expressed in concepts understood as projects of progress during the nineteenth century: liberalism, republicanism, capitalism, socialism, communism, anarchism, among others. These projects, which would also justify various forms of political and social violence, would also shape the history of the twentieth century.

Faced with a present marked by the predominance of the utopia of market freedom as the regulator of society, the persuasion of enchanters who set themselves up as global prophets, and a radical individualism enhanced by the artificiality of virtual relationships, the utopias of the 21st century reveal themselves as alternatives to a bleak future based on explorations of other forms of community and relationships with others and the world. In this context, conceptual history allows us to apprehend historical experiences and expectations that structured (dis)enchantments and utopias, whose analysis can contribute to the understanding of the uncertainty of history and the present.

 

Aimed at advanced graduate students (masters and doctorate), professors and researchers in history, arts, political science, law, economics, sociology, anthropology, literature, linguistics, philosophy, the 7th Summer School CONCEPTA IBEROAMERICA brings together for ten working days at the Center for Historical Studies of El Colegio de México an international staff of renowned professors. It is organized in introductory courses, specialized seminars, conferences and a workshop for the presentation of projects of the participants. It is a unique space in Latin America for rigorous, plural and transnational academic discussion on conceptual history, its methodologies, limits and challenges.

Faculty

• Aurelia Valero Pie (Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas-UNAM) 
• Carolina Martínez (Conicet-Universidad Nacional de San Martín) 
• Christian Edward Cyril Lynch (IESP-UERJ-Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro) 
• Claudio Lomnitz (Columbia University) 
• Darío Roldán (Universidad Torcuato Di Tella/Conicet) 
•  Elías Palti (Universidad de Buenos Aires/CHI-UNQ/Conicet) 
• Elisa Cárdenas Ayala (Universidad de Guadalajara) 
• Erika Pani (El Colegio de México) 
• Eugenia Roldán Vera (Cinvestav) 
• Francisco Ortega (Universidad Nacional de Colombia) 
• Francisco Quijano (Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas-UNAM) 
• Gabriel Entin (UdeChile/Conicet-CHI-UNQ) 
• Ilan Semo (Universidad Iberoamericana) 
• Javier Fernández Sebastián (Universidad del País Vasco)       
• João Paulo Pimenta (Universidade de São Paulo) 
• Martin J. Burke (City University of New York) 
• Rafael Mondragón (Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas-UNAM) 
• Rafael Rojas (Centro de Estudios Históricos, COLMEX)

Where? Centro de Estudios Históricos-El Colegio de México (Mexico city)

When? July 29-August 9, 2024

Duration: 60 hours

• All bibliography (Spanish, Portuguese and English) will be available in digital format at least one month before the beginning of the Summer School.
• Official certificates will be issued
• Classes and lectures will be given mostly in Spanish. A limited number of presentations will be given in English and Portuguese.

Admission requirements

• CV (max. 1 page)
• Letter of intent with the reasons why you wish to enroll in the CONCEPTA Iberoamerica Summer School, mentioning and explaining the M.A. or Ph.D. project, or work in progress (max. 1 page).
• Applications (CV+Letter of Intent) can be sent in Spanish, English or Portuguese.

Registration

• Students (M.A. and Ph.D. candidates): $5,500 Mexican pesos (320 USD)
• Postdoctoral fellows and professors: $7,900 Mexican pesos (470 USD)

Scholarships

Only partial and full scholarships will be granted for registration. Those who wish to apply for these scholarships must include an application (max. 1 page) with a statement of reasons together with the admission requirements.

Deadline for submission of applications: April 29, 2024

Admission results: May 17, 2024

Inquiries and submission of applications: concepta@colmex.mx

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