Founded at New York University in 1997, the Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge (IHPK) is a non-degree-granting initiative designed to encourage faculty and students to explore the changing configurations of disciplines, methodologies, and technologies that have shaped knowledge in the ancient and modern worlds. By sponsoring seminars and workshops that examine the history of these configurations, the Institute also supports experiments with new constellations of subject matters and texts, innovative methodologies, and interrogations of existing departmental and divisional organization within this and other universities. 

In the late twentieth-century U.S., the traditional custodians of knowledge -- schools and universities, organized religion, government, and the professions -- have been forced to cede some of their authority to rivals -- internet entrepreneurs, talk show hosts, independent film makers. This challenge to established authority in the U.S. is part of the international growth of information systems, which link geographically distant areas of the globe and, in the process, encourage us to reconceptualize basic epistemological categories like space and time. Within many universities in the U.S. and abroad, scholars have begun to interrogate these and other foundational categories by revising canons, questioning disciplinary boundaries, and, in some cases, challenging the long-cherished notion that objectivity and value-free knowledge are possible, or even desirable, scholarly goals.  Some universities have already given these and related inquiries institutional space in cultural studies or science studies programs, but thus far, most of these programs have lacked a strong historical component. The Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge is intended to provide opportunities for groups of students and faculty to explore the links between past and present epistemological interrogations as a means of increasing our understanding of the ramifications such changes can have. 

Because no range of seminars could possibly exhaust the topics related to this enterprise, the Institute offers no set curriculum. Instead, the Institute offers graduate seminars, the subjects of which vary from term to term. These seminars treat topics related to knowledge-production in general.  They are developed under the auspices of the Institute and are then sponsored by existing departments at NYU.  

In addition to these seminars, the Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge also offers a dissertation fellowship, which is awarded annually to a student working on some aspect of knowledge-production, and several graduate assistantships. As the Institute acquires additional faculty and faculty-affiliates, we will offer a graduate certificate, a set of undergraduate courses, an undergraduate minor, and a faculty and graduate student seminar. 

Originally posted: 04/23/2003

Last updated: 04/25/2003