This exclusively digital collection features work conducted as part of the program “Passage des disciplines: ‘A Global History of the Collège de France, 19th and 20th Centuries’,” directed by Antoine Compagnon.
“Passage des disciplines” is a research project, launched in 2012, that examines the emergence of scientific and literary disciplines, their organization, and their evolution—both nationally and internationally—during the 19th and 20th centuries, drawing in particular on the history of faculty appointments at the Collège de France. This institution serves as a privileged observatory because the juxtaposition and redistribution of knowledge are enshrined in its statutes. This research program is organized around the study of the “reports” presented to the Faculty Assembly in support of chair proposals, from which it is possible to analyze the formation and circulation of knowledge from a broader perspective—that is, without limiting ourselves to the chairs that were selected or to the frameworks of a single institution of knowledge. One of the project’s key objectives is to study the institutional interactions that shaped the formation of knowledge and disciplines. This joint analysis of chair proposals approved and rejected by the College, within the broader context of higher education and research, may reveal previously unknown issues in the medium and long term and shed light on the historical and contemporary development of disciplines.
