Why Non-European Languages Matter to European Humanities: Area Studies and Postcolonial Philology
By Christian Junge (Arabic Studies, University of Marburg, Germany). English is, without doubt, the dominant academic language of our time, especially in the natural sciences, where materials are often taught and published in English. On the contrary, in European humanities, scholars of literary and cultural studies, linguistics and philosophy teach and publish quite widely in minor academic languages, such as German, Italian or Polish.