Organised by Anne Eusterschulte and Beatrice Gründler, project Premodern Anthologies and the Selective Fiction of Tradition Building, Research Area 3: "Future Perfect"

The aim of our second workshop in 2024 is to bring together experts from various classical, pre-modern and contemporary fields of research to examine anthological text or text-image formats based on case studies from different cultures and time periods. From a comparative perspective, we ask about philological, literary, and artistic principles of selection and collection, about implicit epistemic orders as well as aesthetic strategies, and thus about anthologizing procedures as aesthetic practices. The very conception of anthologies in the premodern context reveals a transcultural entanglement of textual witnesses from different, even distant linguistic and temporal spheres, from diachronic as well as synchronic traditions and socio-historical contexts. Anthologies can be seen as transcultural and at the same time transtemporal media of negotiation. By collecting textual as well as artistic witnesses, networks of scholars (synchronic and diachronic) become indirectly manifest. Through the selection of fragmented texts, images and materials polyphonic, cross-cultural discourses emerge and create ever shifting traditions and audiences. In this sense, anthologizing as practice always shapes and generates "temporal communities".

Programme

Monday, 2 December 2024

20:00 | Open Table Talk (with all active participants): Practices of 'Anthologising'

Tuesday, 3 December 2024

9:45-10:00 | Anne Eusterschulte & Beatrice Gründler (Freie Universität Berlin/EXC 2020): Welcome and Introduction

Chair: Beatrice Gründler

10:15-11:15 | Johannes Stephan (Freie Universität Berlin): The Anthological Epistemology of adab (Arabic Writings from the Eighth and Ninth Centuries CE)

11:30-12:30 | Reimund Leicht (Freie Universität Berlin): Peshat in Context (Philosophic and Scientific Hebrew Terminology)

Lunch Break

Chair: Glenn Most (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)

13:30-14:30 | Holger Gzella (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München): Biblical Wisdom Books as Cross-Cultural Anthologies

14:45-15:45 | Mark Geller (University College London): Wissenstransfer Gone Wrong: Akkadian Omens in Aramaic Anthologies

16:00-17:00 | Christian Mauder (Freie Universität Berlin): Anthologising Practices Between the Library and the Salon: Insights from the Egyptian Court of Qanisawh al-Ghawri (r. 1501-1516)

Coffee Break

Chair: Hanan Natour (EXC 2020)

17:30-18:30 | Theodore S. Beers (Anonym Classic, FU Berlin; Drexel University, Philadelphia): Arabic Anthologists' Discussion of Persian Poets

18:45-19:45 | Giulia Baldelli (Stuttgart Research Center for Text Studies): Handbooks, Florilegia and 'Treasure Chests': The Anthological Dissemination of Jacob Böhme’s 'Mysticism'

Wednesday, 4 December 2024

Chair: Anne Eusterschulte (Freie Universität Berlin/EXC 2020)

10:15-11:15 | Elisabeth Décultot, Martin Dönicke (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg): Edition Winckelmann Exzerpte Digital

11:30-12:30 | Jan Jacob van Ginkel (Freie Universität Berlin): Compiling History: Some Remarks on the Methodology and Goal of Using Excerpts in Syriac Historiography

Lunch Break

Chair: Hanan Natour (EXC 2020)

13:30-14:30 | Isabel Toral (Freie Universität Berlin): The Unique Necklace by Ibn Abd Rabbih (d. 940 AD): Textual Practices and Authorial Voice

14:45-15:45 | Bilal Orfali (American University of Beirut): Prestige (Sharaf) as a Criterion for Inclusion in Anthologies

16:00-17:00 | Florentina Geller (The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, London): Visual Anthologies

Coffee Break

Chair: Anne Eusterschulte & Beatrice Gründler (Freie Universität Berlin/EXC 2020)

17:30-18:30 | Andrew James Johnston (Freie Universität Berlin/EXC 2020): Chaucer's Canterbury Tales - an Act of Self-Anthologising?

19:00 |  Final Discussion - Plans