WHAT IS RECEPTION HISTORY, AND HOW DID YOU BECOME INTERESTED IN IT? GLORY: Reception history is a type of intellectual history that investigates how ideas come to life. Rather than focusing purely on interpreting a text (or idea) in context, reception history investigates how and why people read, digest, and propagate an idea or set of ideas.  It explores how and why certain ideas become powerful while others don’t. CLAIRE: Glory’s point about making ideas come alive is really powerful. At its core, reception history grapples with big questions about how and why people in the past have found certain Read more