Search

In the framework of the research program Zukunftsphilologie: Revisiting the Canons of Textual Scholarship, the Forum Transregionale Studien and the Max Weber Stiftung – German Humanities Institutes Abroad in cooperation with the University of Cape Town and the French Institute South Africa organized an international winter school at the University of Cape Town, September 4-14, 2015, entitled "World Scripts: Concepts and Practices of Writing from a Comparative Perspective".

The winter school was conceptualized and steered by members of the Zukunftsphilologie collegium. It built on two previous Zukunftsphilologie winter schools: "Textual Practices Beyond Europe, 1500-1900" (Cairo, 2010), and "Philologies Across the Asias: The Translation, Transmission and Transformation of Knowledge in the Early Modern World" (Delhi, 2012).

This winter school explored, from a comparative and global perspective, the vocabularies and typologies of writing in various philological traditions and the role of script as a technology in the production, diffusion, archiving and exchange of knowledge. Hosted at the University of Cape Town, it focused on the experience of writing and the technologies of script on the African continent, and explored comparative cases and entangled histories that connect Africa to the Arabophone world, the Mediterranean region and through the Indian Ocean to South and Southeast Asia.