History of the Human Sciences
History of the Human Sciences
History of Human Sciences is an international journal of peer-reviewed scholarly research, which provides an important forum for contemporary research in the social sciences, in the humanities, and in human psychology and biology. It is especially concerned with research that reflexively examines its own historical origins and interdisciplinary influences in an effort to review current practice and to develop new research directions.
Critical Examination
In recent years we have witnessed a significant convergence of interest between the social sciences and the humanities - as well as in relation to the psychological and biological sciences. Scholars are critically examining their traditional assumptions and preoccupations about human beings, their societies and their histories in light of developments that cut across disciplinary boundaries.
An Interdisciplinary Approach
History of the Human Sciences aims to expand our understanding of the human through a broad interdisciplinary approach. The journal publishes articles from a wide range of fields - including sociology, psychology, anthropology, political science, philosophy, literary criticism, critical theory, art history, linguistics, and the law - that engage with the histories of these disciplines and the interactions between them.
The journal does not restrict its remit to any particular theoretical, historiographical or methodological orientation, but rather seeks to expand the analytical frameworks used to understand the histories and epistemologies of the human sciences.
That said, a successful article will typically:
• address at least one of the modern human sciences broadly conceived (including psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, history/historiography, medicine, sociology, anthropology, economics, geography, political economy, human biology, neuroscience, critical theory, linguistics, literary theory). By 'modern', we generally mean post-Cartesian, though we are not averse to submissions on ancient human sciences (e.g., Ancient Greek psychology, medieval medicine) if the approach has significance for modernity or is interpreted from a modern point of view (as in, for example, Foucault).
• take an intellectual-historical or an interdisciplinary approach (or in the best-case scenario, both of these) to open up epistemological and/or historiographical questions relating to the chosen topic or problematic.
• address questions of method.
In general, we avoid publishing:
• Strictly disciplinary histories and/or case studies that focus on one human science and do not open up wider epistemological questions of interest to those working on other human sciences.
• Articles that use methods that are unusual in the humanities and interpretive social sciences without explicitly reflecting on the epistemological implications of such methods.
• Articles that address fields outside of the human sciences without considering the implications of the argument for the history of the human sciences.
Editors
The Editors are: Professor Felicity Callard (University of Glasgow) [Editor-in-Chief], Dr Rhodri Hayward (Queen Mary University of London), Dr Sarah Marks (Birkbeck, University of London), Dr Chris Millard (University of Sheffield), Dr Amanda Rees (University of York), and Professor Chris Renwick (University of York). Dr Hannah Proctor (University of Strathclyde) is the Book Reviews Editor and the Web and Social Media Editor of the journal's para-site Histhum.com
The editors come from a range of disciplines - geography, history, German/ comparative literature, sociology - and all have strong cross-disciplinary interests. They continue the journal's rigorous interdisciplinary investigation of the human condition. Their incoming editorials can be read here and here.
Regular Special Issues
The journal provides comprehensive coverage of a range of themes across the human sciences. Special issues and sections have been devoted to:
Normality: A Collection of Essays
Histories of Sexology Today: Reimagining the Boundaries of Scientia Sexualis
Knowing Savagery: Humanity in the Circuits of Colonial Knowledge
The Future of the History of the Human Sciences
The Total Archive: Data, Subjectivity, Universality
Psychopathological Fringes: Knowledge Making and Boundary Work in 20th Century Psychiatry
Psychology and its Publics
Psychotherapy in Historical Perspective
The Frankfurt School: Philosophy and (Political) Economy
Social and Human Sciences across the Iron Curtain
Visibility Matters: Diagrammatic Renderings of Human Evolution and Diversity in Physical, Serological and Molecular Anthropology
Vygotsky in His, Our and Future Times
Norbert Elias and Process Sociology– Across Disciplines
Historians in the Archive: Changing Historiographical Practices in the Nineteenth Century
Inventing the Psychosocial: Stress and Social Psychiatry
Relations between Psychical Research and Academic Psychology in Europe, the USA and Japan
Foucault Across the Disciplines
Neuroscience, Power and Culture
Intimacy in Research
Sociology and its Strange ‘Others’
Reflexivity in the Human Sciences
Holocaust Studies
Glimpses of Utopia
The Archive
The New Art History
Coverage of the Latest Literature
History of the Human Sciences publishes review essays and review symposia.
Regular book reviews are now published on our complementary and freely accessible para-site Histhum.com. Reviews receive the same levels of editorial oversight as they did when published in the journal.
"History of the Human Sciences has become essential reading for anyone interested in those intersections linking theory, critical history and the human sciences as disciplines. The articles are distinctive and stimulating, and the reviews are indispensable." William Connolly
History of the Human Sciences is available on SAGE Journals Online.
History of the Human Sciences is an international journal of peer-reviewed scholarly research that expands our understanding of the human through an interdisciplinary approach. The journal publishes articles from a wide range of fields — including sociology, psychology, psychoanalysis, the neurosciences, anthropology, political science, philosophy, literary criticism, critical theory, art history, linguistics, and law - that engage with the histories of these disciplines and the interactions between them. We do not restrict our remit to any particular theoretical, historiographical or methodological orientation, but rather seek to expand the analytical frameworks used to understand the histories and epistemologies of the human sciences.
| Felicity Callard | University of Glasgow, UK |
| Rhodri Hayward | Queen Mary, University of London, UK |
| Sarah Marks | Birkbeck, University of London, UK |
| Chris Millard | University of Sheffield, UK |
| Amanda Rees | University of York, UK |
| Chris Renwick | University of York, UK |
| Hannah Proctor | University of Strathclyde, UK |
| Sabine Arnaud | Centre Alexandre-Koyré, France |
| Peter Barham | University of the West of England, UK |
| Heike Bauer | Birkbeck, University of London, UK |
| Gillian Beer | University of Cambridge, UK |
| Peter Beilharz | Sichuan University, China |
| Claude Blanckaert | Melun, France |
| Cornelius Borck | Universität zu Lübeck, Germany |
| Jamie Cohen-Cole | The George Washington University, US, USA |
| Alan Costall | Portsmouth University, UK |
| Kurt Danziger | York University, Toronto, Canada |
| Sarah Dunstan | University of Glasgow, UK |
| Matthew Eddy | University of Durham, UK |
| Stephen Engelmann | University of Illinois at Chicago, US, USA |
| Des Fitzgerald | Cardiff University, UK |
| Marion Fourcade | University of California-Berkeley, USA |
| Steve Fuller | The University of Warwick, UK |
| Isabel Gabel | University of Chicago, USA |
| Stefanos Geroulanos | New York University, US, USA |
| James Good | Durham University, UK |
| Sarah Igo | Vanderbilt University, USA |
| Joel Isaac | University of Cambridge, UK |
| Junko Kitanaka | Keio University, Japan |
| Rebecca Lemov | Harvard University, US, USA |
| Geoffrey Lloyd | University of Cambridge, UK |
| Angus Nicholls | Queen Mary, University of London, UK |
| Thomas Osborne | University of Bristol, UK |
| Michael Pettit | York University, Canada |
| Hannah Proctor | University of Strathclyde, UK |
| Sadiah Qureshi | University of Birmingham, UK |
| Paul A. Roth | University of California-Santa Cruz, USA |
| Barbara Herrnstein Smith | Duke University, US, USA |
| Roger Smith | Independent Scholar, Moscow, Russia |
| Marianne Sommer | Universität Luzern, Switzerland |
| Carolyn Steedman | University of Warwick, UK |
| Arthur Still | University of Durham, UK |
| Marilyn Strathern | University of Cambridge, UK |
| John Tresch | The Warburg Institute, UK |
| Stephen Turner | University of South Florida, USA |
| Neil Vickers | King’s College London, UK |
| Fernando Vidal | Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, Spain |
Manuscript submission guidelines can be accessed on Sage Journals.