Concepta

El Colegio de México 

Conceptual history constitutes an original and innovative theoretical and methodological tool for research in 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 objective of this 8th Summer School CONCEPTA Iberoamerica is to introduce, relate and discuss the main approaches to conceptual history: Begriffsgeschichte, Cambridge School, Conceptual History of the Political, Padua School. And its authors: Reinhart Koselleck, Hans Blumenberg, J.G.A. Pocock, Quentin Skinner, Michel Foucault, Claude Lefort, Pierre Rosanvallon, Giuseppe Duso, among others. 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.

In this new edition of the CONCEPTA Iberoamerica Summer School, the perspectives of conceptual history will be linked to the exploration of a problem: rethinking civilization and barbarism. Figure of the other, the barbarian, a word from Greek antiquity derived from the onomatopoeia barbar, was originally used to designate those who were not Greeks and to mark their own socio-cultural superiority, synonymous with civility. The term thus established a binary vision of the world: from the 5th century BC, with the Persian wars, the antagonism between Hellenes and barbarians would give shape to the Greek identity; antagonism that would continue with the Romans.

Representation of a dangerous otherness, the barbarian would be at the same time an object of curiosity because of his strangeness (of customs, languages, clothing, etc.), and of political and moral thinking: the barbarian could take different forms in a comparative game of representations where the characterization of the other implied an image of oneself and of the community.

During the conquest of America, the concept was used to legitimize the domination of the Europeans over the indigenous people. Nevertheless, it was also used in the opposite sense, as Bartolomé de Las Casas did, when he denounced the Spaniards as the true barbarians for their violence and cruelty. While in his essay on cannibals (1580) Montaigne maintained: “We may then call these people barbarous, in respect to the rules of reason: but not in respect to ourselves, who in all sorts of barbarity exceed them"

In the middle of the eighteenth century, the new concept of civilization appeared in Europe, which would characterize the Enlightenment, imperial expansion, the Atlantic revolutions and colonialism through the uses of an asymmetrical and reductionist pair: civilization and barbarism. The dissemination of Guizot's General History of Civilization in Europe (1828) generalized the concept of civilization associated with the “development”, “progress” and “perfection” of society and humanity. From Latin America, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento adopted this sense in his Facundo ( 1845). And with his formula civilization and barbarism he sought to establish the idea of an antagonism essential to all historical reality, which would become a constitutive element of the nation, nationalisms and the dynamics of racialization of the other.

If at the end of the twentieth century, Samuel P. Huntington foresaw that the post-Cold War order would be marked by the clash of civilizations, understood as cultural blocs, the twenty-first century reveals the difficulty of understanding civilization and barbarism through cultural determinism, and challenges us to rethink these asymmetrical concepts face to a future whose radical uncertainty is identified with both catastrophe and the barbarism of the civilized.

Aimed at advanced graduate students, professors and researchers in history, political science, law, economics, sociology, anthropology, literature, arts, linguistics, philosophy, the 8th 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, is organized in introductory courses, specialized seminars, conferences and a workshop for the exhibition and critique 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

• Anthony Pagden (University of California Los Angeles)
• Ariel Rodríguez Kuri (El Colegio de México)
• Caroline Cunill (École des hautes études en Sciences Sociales)
• Claudio Lomnitz (Columbia University)
• Diana Roselly Pérez Gerardo (UNAM)
• Elías Palti (University of Buenos Aires/CHI-Conicet)
• Elisa Cárdenas Ayala (University of Guadalajara)
• Francesco Callegaro (UNSAM/École des hautes études en Sciences Sociales)
• Francisco Ortega (National University of Colombia)
• Francisco Quijano (UNAM)
• Gabriel Entin (CHI-Conicet/UdeCh)
• Gabriela Cano (El Colegio de México)
• Guillermo Zermeño (El Colegio de México)
• Humberto Beck (El Colegio de México)
• Jorge Myers (CHI-UNQ/Conicet)
• Marcelo Jasmin (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro)
• Maria Elisa Noronha de Sá (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro)
• Martin J. Burke (City University of New York)
• Matías González (University of Turin)
• Natalia Sobrevilla (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru)
• Nicolás Kwiatkowski (UNSAM-Conicet/Universidad Pompeu Fabra)
• Pablo Yankelevich (El Colegio de México)
• Rafael Rojas (El Colegio de México)

 

Venue: Center for Historical Studies-El Colegio de México 
 

Date: July 28-August 8, 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 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
 

• Summarized CV, indicating level of English (max. 1 page)
   
• Letter of intent with the reasons why you wish to enroll in the CONCEPTA Iberoamerica Summer School, mentioning and explaining your master's thesis, doctoral thesis, or research project in progress (max. 1 page).
   
• Applications (CV+Letter of Intent) can be sent in Spanish, English or Portuguese.
   

Registration
 

• Students (masters and doctoral): $6,200 Mexican pesos (305 USD)
   

• Postdoctoral fellows and professors: $8,700 Mexican pesos (420 USD)

   

Scholarships
 

Only scholarships (partial and full) will be granted at 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 25, 2025 
 

Admission Results: May 16, 2025 
 

Inquiries and submission of applications: concepta@colmex.mx
 

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Organized by Centro de Estudios Históricos-El Colegio de México, Centro de Historia Intelectual-Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Iberconceptos, Concepta. International Research School in Conceptual History and Political Thought.

With the support of Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas-UNAM, Universidad del País Vasco, Universidad de São Paulo, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Universidad de Chile, Universidad Iberoamericana, Comité Mexicano de Ciencias Históricas.