Research in the Cluster of Excellence Cross Cultural Philology is divided into five research areas. Each of these researches its own philological practices and concepts and questions from a trans- and intercultural perspective. The individual areas also work together when questions from the different perspectives complement each other.
Researchers at the Cluster of Excellence are interested in all these different text carriers, fonts, and collection contexts. | © Stefan Pörtner
How are writing systems related to the development and transmission of knowledge, to political and socio-cultural factors, to trade networks and administrative practices? And how do they influence the formation of communal identities and the rise and fall of empires? These are the questions that researchers in the field of "Writing Systems" are asking themselves.
In philological work, texts are also considered in terms of their materiality and mediality. They exist, for example, as cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia, Egyptian papyri, inscriptions on stone, handwritten codices, or prints. Researchers in the field of "Practices in the Layout, Preservation, and Archiving of Texts" will therefore also examine the layout of the surviving texts as well as the connection between texts and paratexts and between texts and illustrations.
Scientists working in the field of "Practices of Editing" will examine the history of editorial practices in an intercultural comparison and, at the same time, develop new methods for doing so. In doing so, they will take advantage of the new opportunities offered by technologies in the field of digital humanities.
The research field "Texts and Commentaries, Canon Formation, and Censorship" focuses on the processes of canon formation and their interconnection with the selection, correction, translation, dissemination, and censorship of texts. In addition, the researchers aim to take a comparative look at the relationship between texts and commentaries across different cultures.
The migration of texts is of interest to researchers in the field of "Migration and Translation of Texts" in several respects: they ask how texts have been moved across places, times, and media. In doing so, they examine practices of textual adaptation, translation, retextualization, summarization, and abridgement, as well as the possible changes that these practices bring about.