SFB 950:  Collaborative Research Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures

• Subject Area: Humanities ; Computer Science, Systems and Electrical Engineering ; Materials Science and Engineering
• Term: from 2011 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 181924784

Manuscripts are the most important medium writing has ever had. For thousands of years, manuscripts have had a determining influence on all cultures that were shaped by them, their only serious rival arising in the early modern period, with the introduction of printing. In the West, scholarly interest in manuscripts has increased significantly over the last two decades. This has surely been influenced by the rise of electronic media, which has stimulated historical and systematic inquiry, both in the humanities and cultural studies. At the same time, in Asia and in Africa manuscripts have been rediscovered as a part of cultural heritages, and the vast quantities of manuscripts (conservatively estimated at approximately 10 million) have begun to be catalogued, recorded and made accessible. This SFB is engaged in fundamental research, investigating from both a historical and comparative perspective, based on material artifacts, the empirical diversity of manuscript cultures. It will establish a new paradigm that is distinct from the research on manuscripts undertaken until now, which has been limited in its approach by region and discipline. On the one hand, the research will question the cultural dependency of what is usually considered as a given fact, and on the other hand, delineate universal categories and characteristics of manuscript cultures, as one possible result of the comparative research. The great variety of fields and disciplines (different Asian, African and European philologies, history, art history, historical musicology, cultural anthropology, informatics and material sciences), as well as the large number of cultures under investigation will ensure that unreflected attitudes, such as considering historically contingent European developments to be generally legitimate, or naive dichotomies (“East-West”), considered self-evident not only in Europe, but also in Asia and Africa, are surmounted. Long-term goals include the establishment of an interdisciplinary research field dealing with general manuscript studies, and the development of sustainable and functional tools.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres

Completed projects

• A01 - Ritual, aesthetics and handwriting: Collaborative poetry in contemporary japan (Project Head Quenzer, Jörg B. )
• A02 - Organization of knowledge through paratexts: The Donglin Manuscripts (Project Head Vogelsang, Kai )
• A03 - Organisation historischen Wissens in Tai-Lü-Manuskripten: das paratextuelle Umfeld einer neu belebten Manuskriptkultur (Project Head Grabowsky, Volker )
• A04 - Noting down oral reports: The accounts of local history from the Mackenzie Collection (Project Head Wilden, Eva )
• A05 - Change and Retention in Annotated Manuscripts of West Africa (Project Head Bondarev, Dmitry )
• A06 - The Changing Praxis of the 19th-century Malay Manuscript Economy (Project Head van der Putten, Jan )
• A08 - Anisong (Ānisaṃsa) Manuscripts from Luang Prabang in a Comparative Perspective: Transformation in the Age of Printing (Project Head Grabowsky, Volker )
• A09 - Structure, Indexing Systems and Liturgical Reading of Early Medieval Gospel Books (Project Head Reudenbach, Bruno )
• A11 - The manuscript B.or. 227 from Leipzig: paratexts as witnesses for Islamic Hadit scholarship (Project Head Brinkmann, Stefanie )
• B01 - Biblia Pauperum Manuscripts: The formation and transmission of biblical knowledge in word-image complexes (Project Head Reudenbach, Bruno )
• B03 - Manuscript Culture and Chant Communities: The Transformation of Manuscripts Containing Trecento Music (Project Head Huck, Oliver )
• B04 - Dividing Texts: Conventions of visual text organization in North Indian and Nepalese manuscripts up to ca. CE 1300 (Project Head Isaacson, Harunaga )
• B05 - The Last Decades of Arabic Manuscript Culture (1870–1930): Coexistence and Interaction with Printing (Project Head Seidensticker, Tilman )
• B07 - Collecting, Extinguishing, Rewriting and Restaging Cultural Identity and History: Cultural Encyclopedias on New Spain (Project Head Kern, Margit )
• B08 - Magia autographa – The Relevance and Status of Jewish Magic Manuscripts in the Age of Printing (Project Head Veltri, Giuseppe )
• B09 - The 'Painting' of Writing: The Iconicity of Writing and Word Pictures in Latin Psalter Manuscripts Used in Religious Rituals (Project Head Wimmer, Hanna )
• B10 - Narrating Theatre: The Reality and Context of Japanese No Manuscripts between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period (Project Head Quenzer, Jörg B. )
• C01 - Esoteric Transmissions: 'The Vanaratna Codex' (Royal Asiatic Society, London, MS Hodgson 35) (Project Head Isaacson, Harunaga )
• C02 - Doxographical organizational schemes in manuscripts and xylographs of the Collection of the Ancient Tantras (Project Head Almogi, Orna )
• C03 - For palaces and tombs: book collections in ancient China (3rd- 1st centuries BCE) (Project Head Friedrich, Michael )
• C04 - The Reform of the Turkish Writing System and the Alevi Community – The End of a Manuscript Culture? (Project Head Motika, Raoul )
• C05 - Beyond the Late Antique Heritage – The Highpoint and Revival of Ethiopian Hagiographic Manuscript Culture (Project Head Bausi, Alessandro )
• C06 - The Transformation of Greek Manuscripts of Aristotelean Texts in the Late Byzantine Period and the Italian Renaissance (Project Head Brockmann, Christian )
• C07 - Arabo-Swahili Manuscripts in Practice: Rituals, Ceremonies, Liturgies and Healing (Project Head Kießling, Roland )
• C08 - East Frankish Manuscripts Containing Collections of Formulae (Project Head Depreux, Philippe )
• C10 - For Readers and Collectors: Publishing Copies of Works on Demand in Peking between the Late 18th and the Early 20th Century (Project Head Friedrich, Michael )
• INF - Data repository manuscript cultures (Project Heads Friedrich, Michael ;  Thiemann, Stefan )
• MGK - Integriertes Graduiertenkolleg Manuskriptkulturen (Project Head Huck, Oliver )
• Z01 - Manuscript Analysis to Recover Lost Writing (Project Head Brockmann, Christian )
• Z02 - Material-science Methods of Reconstructing the History of Manuscripts (Project Head Hahn, Oliver )
• Z03 - Image Processing Methods for Determining Visual Manuscript and Character Features (Project Heads Dreschler-Fischer, Leonie S. ;  Märgner, Volker ;  Neumann, Bernd ;  Stiehl, H. Siegfried )
• Z04 - Zentrales Verwaltungsprojekt (Project Head Friedrich, Michael )

• Applicant Institution: Universität Hamburg
• Participating University: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
• Participating Institution: Orient-Institut Istanbul
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Michael Friedrich