Publishing Programme 2020/2021

All presently available and upcoming titles are listed in our current publisher's preview.

Coming soon

Barbara Gerke
Taming the Poisonous. Mercury, Toxicity and Safety in Tibetan Medical Practice

Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality 7

This rich ethnographic and socio-historical account uncovers how toxicity and safety are expressed transculturally in a globalizing world. For the first time, it unpacks the “pharmaceutical nexus” of mercury in Tibetan medicine (Sowa Rigpa) where, since the thirteenth century, it has mainly been used in the form of tsotel. Tsotel, an organometallic mercury sulfide compound, is added in small amounts to specific medicines to enhance the potency of other ingredients. In concordance with tantric Buddhist ideas, Tibetan medical practitioners confront and tame poisonous substances, and instead of avoiding or expelling them, transform them into potent medicines and elixirs.

Recently, the UN Environment Programme’s global ban on mercury, the Minamata Convention, has sparked debates on the use of mercury in Asian medicines. As Asian medical traditions increasingly intersect with biomedical science and technology, what is at stake when Tibetan medical practitioners in India and Nepal, researchers, and regulators negotiate mercury’s toxicity and safety? Who determines what is “toxic” and what is “safe,” and how? What does this mean for the future of traditional Asian medical and pharmaceutical practices?

Coming in Winter 2020/21

Sebastian Fitzner
Ein Haus für Herkules

Höfische Kultur Interdisziplinär (HKI) 3

Dedicated to housing courtly architectural models, Landgrave Karl founded the so-called Modellhaus at the beginning of the 18th-century, an unusual building which went on to become one of the most admired sights of its time. The collection included, most importantly, a monumental model of the most famous of all the Kassel artworks, namely the statue of Hercules overlooking the extensive Karlsberg gardens. Through recently discovered plans, files, and contemporary travel memoirs, this book retraces the story of this unique building and its collection which lasted almost a century, guiding us through Berlin, Saint Petersburg, and Versailles, to reveal the continuing importance of models.

Coming in Winter 2020/21

Jérôme Verdoot
Une clôture hermétique? Isolement régulier et intérêts séculiers au monastère Saint-Pierre de Lobbes (VIIe–XIVe siècle)

Pariser Historische Studien 119

Au Moyen Âge, les abbayes bénédictines justifiaient leur existence par leur isolement, prétention affirmée à travers, notamment, le topos du locus desertus montrant des saints fondateurs d’abbayes s’installer loin de toute civilisation. Or, pour subsister, les abbayes devaient retirer des biens ou des services de la société englobante (oblats, nourriture, protection…) et, en échange, en fournir d’autres (soutien politique, hospitalité…). Les monastères médiévaux étaient donc profondément intégrés dans la société tout en prétendant en être isolés. Ce paradoxe de la vie monastique est souvent utilisé dans les Ordensforschungen, bien plus rarement pour l’étude d’institutions spécifiques. Le présent ouvrage a pour objectif de confronter ce cadre théorique à la réalité vécue par les moines de l’abbaye Saint-Pierre de Lobbes (Hainaut, Belgique), du viie siècle, date de sa fondation, jusqu’à la fin du xive.

In the Middle Ages, the very existence of Benedictine monasteries was based on their proclaimed isolation from the world, a tenet diametrically opposed to their means of subsistence. Indeed, in order to extract goods from society (oblates, food, protection…), abbeys had to provide tangible goods and services in exchange (political support, hospitality…); monasteries were deeply integrated into medieval society while claiming to be isolated from it. This paradox of monastic life is often referred to in the Ordenforschungen or study of the monastic orders, but it is rarely used when it comes to studying specific institutions. This book aims to test the validity of this theoretical framework against the reality as lived by the monks of the Abbey of St Peter of Lobbes (Hainault, Belgium), from its founding until the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries. In particular, it analyses the interactions between the abbey and its political and economic environment.

Coming in Winter 2020/21

Marc Bonner (Ed.)
Game | World | Architectonics. Transdisciplinary Approaches on Structures and Mechanics, Levels and Spaces, Aesthetics and Perception

In its current digital, pictorial and viral ubiquity, architecture no longer has to be bodily present, but has a mediating role. As a medial hinge it folds different disciplines of media and art onto the realm of the everyday. Here, the idea of architectonics can be understood as the architectural implications of computer games in a broader sense to address the matter of architecture in game worlds as well as the architecture of computer games themselves.

This anthology bundles transdisciplinary approaches around the topics of space, architecture, perception of and worldbuilding in computer games and their media-specific properties. The aim is to show how and under which aspects digital game worlds are constituted. The contributions depart from the beaten tracks of media and game studies, focusing on spatial, architectural and world-shaped phenomena within current digital media culture.

Coming in Spring 2021

Steve Pagel
The roots of contact linguistics. On the emergence of the language contact paradigm in the science of language

Reflecting on language contact and language mixing is part of the European-Western occupation with language from the beginning. Starting with Plato, it is for a long time a rather unexcited reflection, until in the 19th century, the perspective changes radically: the normality of cases of contact and mixing is gone, they become a research taboo first and only a little later a research focus, from which a separate discipline, contact linguistics, emerges. This book, for the first time, tells the whole story of the study of language contact up to the 20th century, and shows how critical-historiographic studies can help to understand and advance current debates (for example, in creolistics).

Coming in Spring 2021

Kurt Weissen
Die Marktstrategien der florentinischen Banken bei der Kurie

With their branch networks and partners, the Florentine banks dominated  international monetary transactions of the 15th century. Thanks to their presence in the main commercial centres of the continent, the merchant bankers from Tuscany dominated the cashless processing of large transfers of money from all over Europe to the Roman Curia. Kurt Weissen examines how curia bankers, such as the Alberti and the Medici, connected Germany to this payment system via Bruges and Venice. He analyses the role played by the establishment of branches in Lübeck, Cologne, Basel and Constance and the importance of cooperation with German merchant companies.

Coming in 2021