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
Künstlersignatur und Artefakt
In the extensive research on artists' signatures, little attention has been paid to their material, topological, and praxeological dimensions. This volume proposes a shift in focus from the texts themselves to how their effects and practices relate to the category of presence. It examines the cross-cultural relationships between text, writing, material, technique, and image, as well as the sacred and profane activities in which signed artifacts were involved. The unique potential of signatures becomes clear in the way they assert presence: they can invite contemplation and use and can combine this with self-reflection and interaction, often playing with the viewer, not least by addressing the materials and techniques that give the artefact its appearance.
Environments, Resources, and Infrastructures Between Russia and the Asia-Pacific
The volume brings together interdisciplinary studies of the environments, resource policies, and infrastructures in the North Pacific, spanning the eighteenth century to the present. From early colonial encounters to post-Soviet transnational cooperation, from hunting and whaling to oil and gas extraction, from imperial conservation to climate change, this collection offers new perspectives to the histories of a region increasingly important to global ecological and strategic debates.
La ville jurée
Pour créer un sentiment de confiance et de solidarité et obtenir l’obéissance des populations aux autorités, les villes, de Constance à Strasbourg, ont, à la fin du Moyen Âge, enserré bourgeois et autres habitants dans des réseaux de relations jurées. L’étude des rituels de serment montre certes que la ville n’était pas une conjuratio de citoyens égaux, mais une société fortement hiérarchisée. Cela ne signifie pas pour autant que jurer avait perdu de son importance. En appréhendant le serment dans le contexte d’une culture urbaine nourrie par le droit et les pratiques de l’Église et de l’Empire, puis en examinant comment il s’est inscrit dans le vaste processus de mise en écrit du gouvernement de la cité, ce livre conteste l’idée de son déclin et lui restitue sa plasticité et son efficacité politique.
In the late Middle Ages, towns in the Rhine valley from Konstanz to Strasbourg created networks of relationships guaranteed by oath in order to build trust and solidarity between their inhabitants and secure their obedience to the authorities. Studying the collective swearing-in rituals like the Schwörtag and the more everyday oath-taking shows that the late medieval town was not a sworn community of equal citizens, but a highly hierarchical society, but that does not mean the oath had lost its value or was in decline. This book tries to examine the urban oath in the context of a political culture nourished by the law and practices of both the Church and the Empire and to consider how it was adapted to the literacy-based city government, in order to understand its political effectiveness.
Fake News im Mittelalter?
The “post-truth era” and a new kind of threat from uncontrollable fake news have been central components in diagnoses of the present for several years. However, the question of how historically new such phenomena actually are is controversial. This volume, which brings together contributions from the fields of history and literary studies, aims to provide a fundamental clarification of whether and in what respect we can speak of fake news in the Middle Ages. A theoretical introduction and case studies are used to examine the extent to which structural analogies can be identified for the constellation of phenomena that are currently referred to as fake news in the European Middle Ages and where the heuristic limits of such anachronism lie.
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.
Multifarious Sacred Geographies
Multifarious Sacred Geographies takes an in-depth look at the sacred geography of the South Indian temple city Kanchipuram. Kanchipuram's particularly diverse religious landscape, with over four hundred temples, is attested to in numerous Sanskrit and Tamil texts that glorify the city. Malini Ambach investigates for the first time three of these glorifying Sanskrit Sthalamāhātmyas in detail and comparatively with regard to their literary geographies of Kanchipuram. These texts link mythology with the local physical landscape and each coloured by a sectarian perspective, they describe the same sacred space, Kanchipuram, by constructing shared and contradictory notions of the temple city.
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.
