Listening to the Past: Digital Approaches to the History of Sound and Language
Company: Deutsches Historisches Institut Washington DC
Location: Washington
Posted on: June 1, 2025
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Job Description:
Listening to the Past: Digital Approaches to the History of
Sound and LanguageMar 19, 2026-Mar 20, 2026Workshop at the German
Historical Institute Washington - Conveners: Hans C. Boas
(University of Texas, Austin) and Atiba Pertilla (GHI
Washington)Call for PapersThe "Listening to the Past" workshop will
bring scholars with interests in history, linguistics, and the
digital humanities together to discuss the use of audio[visual]
sources, the development of innovative methodologies for their
study and dissemination, and assess the state of the field and
chart opportunities for future research. Funding for the workshop
is kindly supported by the Volkswagen Stiftung in conjunction with
the research project "Let the Past Speak! Turning Migrant Letters
of the 19th Century into Speech," a joint collaboration of the
German Historical Institute Washington and the University of Texas
at Austin (Department of Germanic Studies) that will investigate
leveraging written and oral sources with artificial intelligence
(AI) technology to revive the sound of 19th-century speech.Over the
past fifteen years historians have become alive to the potential of
the history of the senses, developing a new awareness and interest
in methodological approaches rooted in sensory perception. Part of
this work has included attempts to reconstruct the frameworks by
which actors in the past created shared sensory
vocabularies-whether visual, auditory, or olfactory, among other
possibilities-to make sense of or to transform their surroundings
and their culture. Out of necessity, when dealing with
unconventional sources, such as songs and recipes, where lived
experience might transcend the textual or the pictorial, scholars
in history and other disciplines have also developed new tools to
conduct research and to in turn communicate their results to
academic and public audiences.With respect to auditory sources,
linguists and especially sociolinguists have long been at the
forefront of research, using both studies specifically designed to
record language usage and oral histories recorded for other
purposes to trace the history and development of regional, social,
and other types of dialects as well as "standard" speech. Over the
past twenty years, linguists have also opened up new avenues for
research by analyzing historical (hand-written and printed)
documents with digital methodologies to determine how languages and
their various dialects change over time and why. These data not
only shed light on the structural changes of languages and
dialects, but they also have allowed linguists to gain a better
understanding of the social and regional dynamics which influence
language change.Given this background, the "Listening to the Past"
workshop will bring together a small cohort of scholars with
interests in history, linguistics, and digital humanities to
discuss the use of audio[visual] sources, the development of
innovative methodologies for their study and dissemination, and to
assess the state of the field and chart opportunities for future
research.We invite scholars from various methodological and
historical backgrounds to participate in this international
workshop. The workshop will be conducted in English. Scholars of
linguistics working on any language, not only German, are
encouraged to contribute proposals. The potential thematic range
for proposals includes, but is not limited to, the following
topics:
The workshop will take place from March 19-20, 2026, and will be
hosted by the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C.Please
submit an abstract (max. 500 words) and a short CV online in
English via the GHI conference platform by May 28, 2025 June 8,
2025 (deadline extended).Accommodations will be arranged and paid
for by the conference organizers. Participants will make their own
travel arrangements; funding subsidies for travel are available
upon request for selected scholars, especially those who might not
otherwise be able to attend the workshop, including junior scholars
and scholars from universities with limited resources.For further
information regarding the event's format and conceptualization,
please contact Hans Boas or Atiba Pertilla . For other logistical
questions, or if you have any difficulties submitting your
information online, please contact Nicola Hofstetter-Phelps .
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Keywords: Deutsches Historisches Institut Washington DC, Bowie , Listening to the Past: Digital Approaches to the History of Sound and Language, Other , Washington, Maryland
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