Winter school 2011 'Textul practices beyond Europe 1500-1900', Cairo, Egypt

The Berlin-based Forum Transregionale Studien and the Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations at the American University in Cairo invite doctoral and postdoctoral scholars to apply for 24 scholarships for a Winter School on the theme TEXTUAL PRACTICES BEYOND EUROPE 1500-1900 that will take place from December 5-16 in Cairo.

The Winter School is organized in the framework of the project ZUKUNFTSPHILOLOGIE: REVISITING THE CANONS OF TEXTUAL SCHOLARSHIP and addresses scholars interested in primary textual scholarship and in varieties of philology in Asia, Africa, the Middle East as well as in Europe beyond the medieval/modern divide. Participants will receive grants that cover the costs of travel and accommodation.

INTERNATIONAL WINTER SCHOOL FOR DOCTORAL AND POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHERS

Cairo, December 5-16, 2010
'Zukunftsphilologie: Revisiting the Canons of TextualScholarship'
DL:05.09

Within the framework of the Project 'Zukunftsphilologie: Revisiting the Canons of Textual Scholarship' and in cooperation with the Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations at the American University in Cairo, the Berlin-based Forum Transregionale Studien and the American University in Cairo invite applications for an international Winter School on the theme:

TEXTUAL PRACTICES BEYOND EUROPE 1500-1900

The Winter School is scheduled for December 5-16, 2010 at the downtown-campus of the American University in Cairo (AUC). Twenty-four scholars will be given the opportunity to present and discuss their current research on the function, development, meaning, and practice of philology across varied communities and geographies. The Winter School will be chaired by a group of scholars including Manan Ahmed (Institut fuer Islamwissenschaft, Freie Universitaet Berlin), Muzaffar Alam (Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago), Islam Dayeh (Freie Universitaet Berlin), Nelly Hanna (Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations, AUC), Martin Mulsow (Universitaet Erfurt), and Angelika Neuwirth (Institut fuer Arabistik und Semitistik, Freie Universitaet Berlin).

The project Zukunftsphilologie endeavours to promote and emphasize primary textual scholarship beyond the classical humanistic canon. In an age of advanced communication, intellectual specialization, and unprecedented migration of knowledge and people, the discipline of philology assumes new relevance. Zukunfts-philologie aspires to support research in marginalized, undocumented and displaced varieties of philology by revisiting pre-colonial texts and scholarly traditions in Asia, Africa, the Middle East as well as in Europe.

In order to promote historically-conscious philology, the project will foster research in the following areas: the genealogy and transformations of philological practice, philology’s place in the system of knowledge (e.g. its relation to science, theology, and jurisprudence), philology and the university, and the relation of philology to nation and empire. Zukunftsphilologie aims to examine the role mobility, networks of scholars, calamities, and expulsions play in the dissemination and globalization of knowledge. What is the impact of migration, expulsions and calamities (such as the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Al-Andalus, the plague, or the displacements and movements accompanied by the expansion of the Ottoman, Mongol or British Empires) on textual practice?

How does the mobility of scholars, books, and manuscripts bring about scientific innovation (e.g. in tenth-century Baghdad, during the European Renaissance,
during the Ming dynasty or during the 18th and 19th century)? How can the world of readers and carriers which surrounded a text since its inception be imagined? How can the literary imagination within texts, their transformative powers, and social function be investigated historically, historiographically, and now, in our own present time? How did texts have different
meanings for different readers, or different layers of meanings, which could be utilized by readers or users? How have sacred texts been used in different societies to guide their readers or to control them?

How were texts used as a source of power? How did certain groups gain or consolidate their power through texts? To situate a text philologically, historically, culturally is to trace also the networks of readers, and to delineate its movements across linguistic, geographical and temporal
borderlines.

A text emerges from a particular context; it also emerges among a context of readers; how can one trace the way that readers absorb or alter it, or appropriate it in different geographical, linguistic and temporal contexts?

What types of knowledge systems do processes of canonization and reorganization displace? What kinds of transformations, translations and re-translations (e.g. from Sanskrit to Persian, from Greek to Arabic, from Chinese to English or from ancient or medieval to modern) accompany such mobilizations across regions? How did translations and translations of
translations change meanings as they were appropriated by different cultures?

With these questions in mind, the Zukunftsphilologie Winter School aims to support critical reviews of historical and philological practice beyond and within Europe. `Textual practices` refers to the wide range of production and engagement with texts, regardless of content (be it historiographical, legal, literary, religious, scientific, etc.). The Winter School will consider issues such as notions of authorship, genre, periodization, readership, interpretative methods,
textual transmission, translation, textual integrity, the archive, editorial choices and policies, the philological curriculum, as well as important philological encounters and debates. By concentrating on textual practices beyond Europe in the period between the 16th and 19th century, the aim is also to contribute to the historicization and pluralization of philology and to reflect on the wider cultural and political context in which texts and the art of reading emerged and how this has shaped our knowledge.

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