Connected Philology. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Transcultural Encounters

The English-language anthology Connected Philology. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Transcultural Encounters has now been published open access. We would like to express our sincere thanks and congratulations to everyone involved. The volume brings together the results of an interdisciplinary conference organised by doctoral students of the first funding period of the IDK in 2023 and was edited by the doctoral students. Three alumni of the IDK Philology are also represented with their own contributions. The volume is published by De Gruyter Brill, copyright 2026. We would like to thank the Elite Network of Bavaria for its financial support.

The volume ties in with current research questions on pre-modern practices of philology: although the similarities between philological methods and traditions in different cultures have already been the subject of scientific research, the causes of these parallels remain largely unclear. The present volume addresses this situation by introducing the concept of ‘Connected Philology’ from an interdisciplinary perspective. 'Connected Philology' examines the fundamental reasons for similarities in philological practices: in the process of retextualisation, written and oral traditions are translated, reformulated and linked together; contact with foreign cultures leads to the adoption of new concepts in other languages and the adaptation of semantics. Furthermore, these practices are situated within the field of tension between politics, society and individual actors. The contributions focus on transcultural encounters, the resulting circulation of texts, processes of cultural transfer, and the history and politics of a connected and connecting philology.

This richly stimulating collection introduces a new generation of dynamic young scholars carving out innovative paths in comparative historical research on philological practices connected throughout the world. They go beyond traditional monocultural and more recent multicultural studies to explore genuinely transcultural approaches to the care of texts that has flourished for millennia in the most diverse cultural spheres and disciplines and that only now is starting to be recognized.

Prof. Dr. Glenn Most

Gonschorek, Korinna, Marco Pouget, Luis Schäfer und Nikola Wenner (ed.s), in collaboration with Ciarrocchi, Emanuele, Simon Haffner, Enbo Hu, Matthias Knallinger, Jonas Müller, Opheli Norris, Elisabeth Seidel und Bastian J. Wagner. 2026. Connected Philology. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Transcultural Encounters. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Brill. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111432861.