Aus unseren Neuerwerbungen – Sprachen und Kulturen Asiens, Afrikas und Ozeaniens 2025.5

Myth and the Mak­ing of His­to­ry: Nar­rat­ing Ear­ly Chi­na with Sarah Allan
Myth and the Mak­ing of His­to­ry exam­ines the rela­tion­ship between myth and his­to­ry in ear­ly Chi­na, a top­ic that has been explored by Amer­i­can pale­o­g­ra­ph­er and schol­ar of ancient Chi­na Sarah Allan through­out her career. Allan has worked at a cru­cial and sen­si­tive inter­sec­tion, where myth and his­to­ry col­lide at the very heart of China’s ori­gin sto­ry. Her work has cre­at­ed an intel­lec­tu­al space in which the dis­ci­plines of phi­los­o­phy, his­to­ry, anthro­pol­o­gy, arche­ol­o­gy, philol­o­gy, and lit­er­a­ture have come togeth­er, help­ing to change the way schol­ars con­ceive of his­tor­i­cal pat­terns in China’s past.
In Myth and the Mak­ing of His­to­ry, eleven senior and emerg­ing schol­ars, from both Chi­na and the West, respond to the intel­lec­tu­al chal­lenge raised by Allan’s the­o­ret­i­cal mod­el of analy­sis of mythol­o­gized and his­tor­i­cal fig­ures (and even dynas­ties) that have intrigued schol­ars for gen­er­a­tions and play a cen­tral role in the Chi­nese his­tor­i­cal imag­i­na­tion. The book will be of great inter­est to all schol­ars and stu­dents of Chi­na-of what­ev­er lev­el and dis­ci­pline-and, indeed, those con­cerned with oth­er ear­ly civ­i­liza­tions as well.
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Lin­gua Ex Machi­na: Media in the Revi­tal­iza­tion of Mod­ern Hebrew
Lin­gua Ex Machi­na inves­ti­gates the role com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies played in shap­ing the reemer­gence of mod­ern Hebrew speech, argu­ing that tech­nolo­gies such as the phono­graph, type­writer, and telegraph—whose devel­op­ment par­al­leled the revi­tal­iza­tion of Hebrew—were an active force in shap­ing the lan­guage as a mod­ern medi­um of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.
After lying dor­mant for two mil­len­nia as a main­ly writ­ten lan­guage, Hebrew awoke from its lit­er­ary slum­ber to become a liv­ing mod­ern ver­nac­u­lar. This revi­tal­iza­tion is unique and unprece­dent­ed in world his­to­ry, and its suc­cess has been stud­ied in fields from lin­guis­tics to cul­tur­al his­to­ry. How­ev­er, the role of mod­ern tech­nolo­gies in medi­at­ing this revival has not yet been con­sid­ered.
What hap­pens when an ancient lan­guage meets mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy? Lin­gua Ex Machi­na explores such a moment in its inves­ti­ga­tion of the role media technologies—including type­writ­ers, phono­graphs, and computers—played in the revi­tal­iza­tion and mod­ern­iza­tion of Hebrew from the end of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry into the present day.
Ido Ramati exam­ines the role sound record­ing tech­nolo­gies played in shap­ing the reemer­gence of mod­ern Hebrew speech, reveals how the Hebraized type­writer pushed for the mod­ern­iza­tion of writ­ing in Hebrew, and ulti­mate­ly argues that these media—whose devel­op­ment and adop­tion par­al­leled the revi­tal­iza­tion of Hebrew—were an active force in shap­ing the lan­guage as a mod­ern com­mu­nica­tive medi­um. This case study of Hebrew fur­nish­es researchers with a rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to inves­ti­gate the com­plex rela­tion between lan­guage, its speak­ers, and tech­nol­o­gy at a deci­sive moment, and sheds new light on the study of media tech­nolo­gies and their the­o­ret­i­cal, lin­gual, and social impli­ca­tions.
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