Department of Languages

France in the Age of Covid 19, Ed. French Politics, Culture & Society, Vol. 40. New York: Berghahn Books, 2022. (Sponsored by the Institute of French Studies at New York University and the Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University)

This special issue predominantly discusses the nonmedical aspects of Covid-19’s impacts on France today including politics, intersectional feminism, online activism, the public humanities, artistic performance, and flânerie. It seeks to make sense of a crisis that is still unfolding via its effects on people’s beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors. It demonstrates how Covid-19 breaks through diverse ethnic, cultural, socio-economic, and ideological realms, and encompasses the undefined, infinite, and invisible “other” engaged in the same traumatic experience. It transgresses limits and norms so that we may elevate ourselves to a higher degree of awareness and responsibility.

Penser la ruralité en Aquitaine : Saubusse (1930-2020). Héritage, Territoire, Transmission. Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2024.

The book explores France’s past and present from a rural perspective, a topic not often studied or understood. It also examines the transformations of rural France over the past century (including the collapse of agriculture and religious practices and the rise of technology and globalization) and what these changes mean for our perception of what constitutes a community, the common good, civic engagements, democratic values, and the future of France.

Rainer, Godel and Johannes Schmidt (eds.): Herder Yearbook 16 (2022).

The Herder Yearbook offers—now for the sixteenth time—a selection of current research on Johann Gottfried Herder. This year’s volume collects inquiries into Herder’s reception of Lessing, his sensualism of the 1760s, Herder’s contribution to a theory of climate change, as well as into the reception of Herder in the nineteenth and twentieth century. As in previous years, this volume presents the continuation of the extensive Herder bibliography of primary and secondary literature. Two reviews of current Herder scholarship—one addressing an Italian study of Herder’s philosophy of religion—conclude this volume. The Herder Yearbook is published every other year on behalf of the International Herder Society and presents interdisciplinary scholarship on all aspects of Herder’s works as well as their publication history and reception.

Rainer, Godel and Johannes Schmidt (eds.): Herder Yearbook 17 (2024).

This year’s volume – with the new Publishing house Mohr Siebeck – offers a selection of current research on Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803). Now for the seventeenth time, this volume presents contributions on Herder’s understanding of nature, the influence of English and Scottish philosophy on Herder, his reception of the English satirist Jonathan Swift, four book reviews as well as the continuation of the Herder bibliography of primary and secondary literature.

https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/book/herder-yearbook-herder-jahrbuch-9783161641527

Liisa Steinby, Johannes Schmidt (eds.): Forms of Temporality and Historical Time in the Work of Johann Gottfried Herder. Rutledge 2024.

This edited collection is the first volume solely dedicated to research on Johann Gottfried Herder’s understanding of history, time, and temporalities.

Although his ideas on time mark an important transition period that advanced the emergence of the modern world, scholars have rarely addressed Herder’s temporalities. In eight chapters, the volume examines and illuminates Herder’s conception of human freedom in connection with time; the importance of the concept of forces (Kräfte) for a dynamic ontology; human beings’ sensuous experience of inner and external temporality; Herder’s conception of Bildung, speculations on extra-terrestrial beings and on different perceptions of time; the mythological figure Nemesis and Herder’s view of the past and the future; the temporal dimension in Herder’s aesthetics; and Herder’s biblical studies in relationship to divine infinitude and human temporality. The volume concludes by outlining the influence of Herder’s understanding of time on following generations of thinkers.

Forms of Temporality and Historical Time in the Work of Johann Gottfried Herder is ideal for scholars, graduates, and postgraduates interested in Herder’s metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of history, as well as any scholar concerned with eighteenth-century concepts of time and the emergence of the modern world at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Rainer, Godel and Johannes Schmidt (eds.): Herder Yearbook 15 (2020)

This year’s volume collects inquiries into Herder’s activities as a reviewer, his view on Homer in comparison to Wolf’s and Humboldt’s, furthermore Herder’s deliberations on a “Neue Mythologie” as well as a contribution on the Älteste Urkunde. Besides two studies elucidating the reception of Herder during the nineteenth century, the yearbook also offers editions of original Herder manuscripts: a letter to Bertuch, a poem, and an outline for a sermon. A report on Herder research in Brazil and four reviews conclude this volume.