CSMC Newsletter

On 14 June, a workshop at the CSMC will focus on musical practices and colonial dynamics in 17th, 18th, and 19th century Peru. In this case, we will not leave it at a theoretical examination of the topic, though: in the evening, starting at 7:00 pm, the event will go ‘From Manuscript to Sound’ and selected works will be performed in cooperation with the Hochschule für Musik und Theater (HfMT) at Kleiner Michel. Admission to the concert is free, anyone interested in the workshop can register for it on our wbsite.

How can you tell originals from forgeries? How can you determine the age and origin of a manuscript? And can lost writing be made visible again? Starting on 19 June, a course for pupils, jointly offered by the CSMC and Schülerforschungszentrum Hamburg (SFZ), will give answers to these questions. Since 2023, the CSMC has been working with the SFZ to offer courses for pupils in grades 8 to 10, in which participants gain insights into our research and have the opportunity to examine historical manuscripts themselves using state-of-the-art analytical tools. The examinations will take place at the SFZ and in the CSMC laboratory. Registration is open.

Written Artefacts are shaped by complex processes of production and use, as well as by different settings and patterns. These factors might be subject to change, depending on where, by whom, and how a written artefact is used after its creation. A new contribution in our Occasional Paper series, written by José Maksimczuk, Berenice Möller, Thies Staack, Alexander Weinstock, and Jana Wolf, deals with these complex ‘multilayered’ written artefacts from an analytical point of view and proposes some relevant terminological distinctions. The paper is available to download from our website.

This summer semester, Suzanne Akbari (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) is guest professor for ‘Gender in Manuscript Cultures’ at the CSMC. On 30 May, she presented her current research project in a public lecture entitled ‘The Book as Living Relation: Collaborative Study of Lenape (Delaware) Belongings with Indigenous Communities of Origin’ at the award lecture that is connected with the guest professorship. Before this event, we talked to her about the links between her seemingly disparate research interests and how she aims to diversify our understanding of global book history.

The Menri Monastery is hidden in the Himalayas. It is home to the largest collection of manuscripts on the Bon tradition, but hardly any scholar from the West gets access to it. This April, however, Agnieszka-Helman Wazny and a couple of her colleagues got the rare opportunity to attend a seminar Zhangzhung and Tibetan Studies in this remote place, to see some of the manuscripts, and to discuss with the inhabitants of the monastery. On our website, she share her impressions of this remarkable field trip.

The cataloguing and digitisation of the first private manuscript collection within the framework of ‘DiPiKA – Digitisation and Preservation of Kerala Archives’, our latest cultural heritage project taking place in Thrissur, Kerala (India), are about to be completed. The collection, which is owned by Mr. Damodaran from Pantal Mana, Rappal (Central Kerala), includes 45 palm-leaf and 35 paper manuscripts, containing mostly works on the subject of Vedic ritualism. The digitised collections will be fed into a digital repository, thus forming an online archive of Kerala manuscripts that will be openly accessible.

The Science City is currently the most ambitious urban development project in Hamburg, bringing together innovative international research and modern living in the Bahrenfeld district. On 1 June, the city of Hamburg and twelve local research institutions, including the CSMC, invited the public to get a glimpse into the research that is already being carried out on-site and the plans for the future. The event was met with great interest – over 15,000 people attended in total, and the CSMC programme was immensely busy: throughout the day, we had long queues in front of the VR station showing the ancient theatre of Milet and its inscriptions, lively activity at our cuneiform table, and many curious questions to the ENCI team.

City dwellers see them every day, but hardly anyone notices them: we encounter tags all the time at bus stops, on walls, on electricity boxes. ‘Tagging’ refers to writing one’s name – or an alias – in public spaces. On 13 and 14 May, the internationally renowned graffiti researcher Javier Abarca gave a workshop on the theory and practice of this arguable most widespread form of calligraphy in history. After an introduction to the cultural background and significance of this practice, the participants got to design their own tagging aliases, first on paper and later in ‘real’ conditions, using the glass façade of the workshop room. For an interview with Ondrej Skrabal, co-organiser of the workshop and leader of our research field on ‘Situating Graffiti’, see below. 

The Kiswahili phrase Kutia nakshi, ‘to engrave beauty’, describes one of the most iconic artistic traditions in coastal Kenya: adorning wooden doors with inscriptions. Our Artefact of the Month is firmly rooted in this tradition and stands out at the same time: the placement of its inscription is so unusual that it is the only known extant example on the Swahili coast and surrounding regions. Janet Marion Purdy tells the story of this special nineteenth-century door and its inscriptions, which worship God, engrave beauty, and preserve a unique artist’s legacy and creative bravado.

In public spaces, we encounter no type of written artefacts as often as graffiti. Still, it took a long time for researchers to become interested in them. In this interview, Ondrej Skrabal explains why this is the case and why graffiti is vital for our understanding of past and present societies.