Worldwide and across time: commissioning for a global audience

Behind the scenes of Aeon’s ‘Society’ section ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ [View in browser]( [Donate now]( [10 YEARS aeon]( Worldwide and across time: commissioning for a global audience In 2014, I found myself in an interview for a role at Aeon, discussing with Paul and Brigid Hains the empirical quality of the social sciences and the special place of history as the most lyrical of them. I had just returned from several years living in Beirut and Cairo, and it was exciting to me that Aeon was not a United States-based or -oriented publication. Over the eight years since, Aeon’s audience around the world has grown and evolved, so now more than 50 per cent of readers are outside the US. The opportunity to build a relationship with readers around the world has been a great education and pleasure for me. I like knowing that scholars and writers think about the work we publish, but it’s just as important what the reader who is a pharmacist in Houston or the one who is a consultant in Delhi thinks about it too. That is the democratic character of publishing and journalism. Almost every place in the world has a history of religion and politics and nationalism and empire, all persistent interests of mine. I grew up in rural Wisconsin, in a provincial place and manner, then went to Columbia University in New York and got a PhD in history, specialising in American history. Teaching outside the US, and then marriage, gave me an amount of social experience in the Middle East (Lebanon and Egypt) and India. Living in a new country, one acquires some general bearings from doing normal things like renting an apartment, going to the doctor, and celebrating holidays with neighbours and friends, and marriage is perhaps the oldest method of assimilation. This experience draws my commissioning attention outward from the concerns of the academic world, seeking to publish stories that are of real interest to our widely dispersed readers. ‘A firework of ideas, Aeon manages to bridge a challenging divide: to publish essays that read fresh to specialists and are also accessible to readers new to the field.’ Sven Beckert, Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard Since the global financial crisis of 2008-09, for example, people around the world have turned to economic history to throw light on social and political relationships. Aeon readers have enjoyed some of the fruits, including Ravinder Kaur on how [economic liberalisation in India has fostered Hindu nationalism]( and Sven Beckert and Ulbe Bosma on the way moving commodity frontiers have [transformed the planet in the past six centuries](. #[I’d like to donate]( Kris Lane wrote about how the colonisation of the Americas made [Potosi perhaps the first global city]( and Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven wrote on the singular vision of the [Egyptian Marxian economist Samir Amin]( who coined the term ‘Eurocentrism’. The journalist Tom Bergin wrote on how MIT and Berkeley have been [bringing economics as a discipline back]( to a new empiricism. Aeon readers have found the history of slavery, on which there is so much great scholarship, well represented: from Holly Brewer on the [role of slavery in the life and thought of John Locke]( to Bernard Freamon on why the Gulf States today qualify as what the great classicist Moses Finley [described as ‘slave societies’](. ‘Aeon is the internet worth reading. Brilliant essays by smart people and edited with style. As a historian, I always find something I didn’t even know I didn’t know.’ Josephine Crawley Quinn, Professor of Ancient History at Worcester College, University of Oxford The strength of science and philosophy and psychology in Aeon has encouraged me to bring readers essays in the history and sociology of science, sexuality, family life and the emotions. Zubair Torwali on the [polyglots of Dardistan]( for example, and Keerthik Sasidharan on [the origins and power of dharma]( were both popular. So were Michael Gordin on [the way conspiracy theories work]( and Irvin Cemil Schick’s piece on [sexual pluralism in the Ottoman empire](. Readers have loved profiles of philosophers, so we also brought them some of historians: including Priya Satia on [E P Thompson]( and Stefan-Ludwig Hoffman on [Reinhart Koselleck](. Sometimes, an essay such as Sonam Kachru on [Ashoka’s moral empire]( hits a sweet spot, bringing together a bunch of things – religion and empire and moral philosophy and history – that readers really like. Before too long, you can look forward to essays on the history of Judaism, the strengths and limitations of anticolonial politics, how 20th century ecology changed our understanding of the environment, the ancient world in central Asia, caste in South Asia, and much more. I’d like to hear your suggestions too, and I’m grateful for your support in continuing our work. Your support makes a difference #[I’d like to donate]( Sam Haselby Senior Editor You have received this email because you signed up to the Aeon+Psyche Newsletter list. © Aeon Media Group Ltd 2022. Level 5, 100 Flinders Street, Melbourne, VIC 3000 Australia. [PRIVACY POLICY]( | [ADD US TO YOUR ADDRESS BOOK]( | [UNSUBSCRIBE]( | [CONTACT US](