What I seek to do in this chapter is to build on the existing methodological reflections put forward by historians in order to put forward an alternative form of “serial contextualism,” focused on the reception of an author rather than of a concept, and anchored in that author’s original context of writing. In doing so, I am also building on existing studies of actual reception processes in IR, history, and international law, but my aim is to give a more systematic account of how one might go about studying the reception of a famous author and what this type of inquiry can contribute.