Forthcoming
Publishing Programme 2025/2026
You can find all the titles published to date, as well as an outlook on the titles planned until autumn 2026, in our current publishing programme. heiUP titles are available online for free download and in print via bookshops.
Books
Editionswissenschaft – Textkritik – Digital Humanities
This interdisciplinary volume presents 25 editorial projects from Heidelberg University, the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and the Heidelberg College for Jewish Studies, which are concerned with indexing and making available a wide variety of texts from different eras and in different languages. The contributions offer various perspectives on using digital tools and editorial methods to process and analyse texts that have been handed down. Providing a broad spectrum of insights into editorial practice, the volume demonstrates how editorial projects in the humanities contribute not only to acquiring new knowledge, but also to utilising it in the context of digital transformation.
Normen und Ideale
Every culture has rules and systems of norms that structure and organize social coexistence. These norms are not only enshrined in laws or religious commandments but permeate all forms of cultural expression. They can be found in religious and legal texts as well as in the visual arts, literature, philosophy, and political theory. In all areas of life and art, authors are guided by values. Their texts and cultural artifacts thus become testimonies to social negotiation processes. The contributions to this volume approach these negotiation processes from different perspectives.
Die Zeit der Entscheidungen
This comparative and entangled history of France and Germany from 1933 to 1945 opens up a deeper understanding of a pivotal epoch in European history. It was shaken by the Great Depression, torn apart by the rise of totalitarianism, and marked by the horrors of the Second World War. In these defining years of the 20th century, the constant pressure of events forced individuals and institutions to make fundamental civilizational decisions. On both sides of the Rhine, commitment became the key to the future: Germany established the genocidal “Thousand-Year Reich” and dragged millions of soldiers and civilians to their deaths. Simultaneously, resistance movements developed the highly significant idea of a united Europe underground, despite brutal repression.
Sichtbare Geheimnisse
Le xixe siècle est marqué par l’avènement des technologies de communication. Parmi elles, les télégraphes optiques, aujourd’hui tombés dans l’oubli, sont apparus dans de nombreux pays européens à partir de la Révolution française. Malgré leur grande sensibilité aux perturbations, ils n’ont été remplacés par les technologies de transmission électrique qu’à partir de 1850. Entre accélération et perturbation, espace public et secret, télécommunication et poste, la télégraphie a permis l’émergence de nouvelles formes d’autoreprésentation sociale. La communication est ainsi devenue un sujet sociétal à part entière durant la première moitié du xixe siècle. Dans cet ouvrage, Konrad Hauber présente pour la première fois une histoire de la télégraphie optique en France, en Grande-Bretagne et au Portugal, alliant histoire des médias et des savoirs.
With the nineteenth century began the era of technical communication media, including the now forgotten optical telegraphs that emerged in various European countries beginning with the French Revolution. Despite their susceptibility to interferences, these systems remained in use until they were gradually replaced by electrical telegraphy. Between acceleration and disruption, publicity and secrecy, telecommunication and postal environments, telegraphy enabled new forms of social self-description. Thus, communication became an independent societal concern in the first half of the nineteenth century. In this book, Konrad Hauber offers the first history of optical telegraphy in France, Great Britain, and Portugal, bringing together media history and the history of knowledge.
Femininity Resurgent
This study traces the codification of gender in Soviet Russian opera during Stalinism and the long Soviet sixties. It introduces the concepts of ‘masculinization’ and ‘feminization’ to describe the transition from operas dominated by martial, idealized male heroes to those with complex female protagonists that challenge and deconstruct Stalinist operatic conventions. Through detailed analyses of works by Tikhon Khrennikov, Sergey Prokofiev, Dmitry Kabalevsky, Rodion Shchedrin, Sergey Slonimsky and Kirill Molchanov, the study examines how opera reflects broader socio-political and cultural changes, contributing to musicology, gender studies and Soviet cultural history.
Postcolonial Infrastructure
Colonization is not least an infrastructure project. It involves the destruction of indigenous infrastructure and the transcultural transfer of military, political, social, and other infrastructure to establish and maintain power over colonized peoples. At the same time, infrastructure has emerged as a key site and means of resistance in the decolonial struggle. In this volume, fourteen scholars from literary and cultural studies, linguistics, musicology, and the environmental humanities explore this underrepresented yet essential dimension of colonial, postcolonial, and decolonial life.
Geologie und Mineralogie an der Universität Heidelberg
2018 the Institute of Earth Sciences at Heidelberg University celebrated the 200th anniversary of the inaugural speech of Carl Caesar von Leonhard (1779–1862), first professor of Mineralogy in Heidelberg. The attractive collections of the Institute’s museum would have been greatly appreciated by von Leonhard, himself a passionate collector of rocks, minerals and fossils. Today's Earth scientists, however, rely for their research less on collections, but more on expeditions, on laboratory work or on computer modelling. Already in the early 20th century, three Heidelberg Earth's scientists were renowned for their innovative research approaches and attracted students and visiting scholars from all over the world: the petrographer Harry Rosenbusch, the crystallographer Victor Goldschmidt and the geologist Wilhelm Salomon-Calvi. After World War II, the ore mineralogist Paul Ramdohr and the environmental geochemist German Müller brought strong new research impulses. In 1967 the institutes moved from their crammed work places in the old town to the new buildings on campus. This marks the end of this book, but the story of the Earth Sciences in Heidelberg still continues.
“Gypsy” Genesis
This book aims to deconstruct the public perceptions of the “Gypsy” and is a manifesto for reclaiming Romani memories and for recognition. A particular focus lies on Hungary. First, a critical examination of existing academic national and international knowledge production is undertaken. Then, the paths of 150 Romani intellectuals from three generations are traced. Their emancipatory narratives and agencies are analyzed from the perspective of the concept of resilience. Along with an in-depth literature review, this study is based on a mixed research methodology that includes both qualitative and quantitative comparative analyses of personal accounts from the 1920s to the 2020s.
The God Who Does as He Is Told
This volume is the first comprehensive study of the Yathoktakārī Perumāḷ temple, one of the oldest Viṣṇu shrines in the South Indian temple town of Kanchipuram. Part one brings together essays that examine the temple from various perspectives, including its architecture, ritual traditions, and mythology. Part two offers editions and translations of key primary sources. Together, they provide an essential resource for understanding this important sacred site. This is the first volume in the publication series of the ‘Hindu Temple Legends in South India’ project, which investigates the textual and living traditions of Kanchipuram’s temples.
Umwelt interdisziplinär
Since 2011, Heidelberg University has been bringing together environmental research across the full spectrum of the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities under the umbrella of the Heidelberg Center for the Environment (HCE). Drawing on more than a decade of interdisciplinary collaboration, this volume reflects on the disciplinary foundations, key concepts, and selected fields of action of a broadly conceived environmental research agenda. At the same time, it provides a comprehensive overview of Heidelberg’s expertise, methodological approaches, and thematic research, illustrating how interdisciplinary perspectives contribute to a deeper understanding of contemporary environmental challenges.
Temple of the Heart
Located in the far south of India, the village of Tirukkurungudi is home to an impressive Vishnu temple that is revered as one of the 108 Divya Desas (Divine Places) by Tamil Vaishnavas (Srivaishnavas). Temple of the Heart is an immersive, interdisciplinary study of Tirukkurungudi’s Alakiya Nambi temple, bringing art and architectural history, inscriptions, ritual, poetry, ornamentation and narrative into conversation to demonstrate the many ways a site’s sacrality is constituted, animated and maintained. This richly illustrated and accessible book will appeal both to the general reader interested in the temples of south India and to scholars of Hinduism, Indian art and architecture, rituals and festivals.
