We are delighted to announce the publication of Precarious Life and Determined Letters: Philology as Ethos in the Web of Life, a special issue of German Life and Letters edited by Tina-Karen Pusse, Associate Professor from the German Discipline at the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Galway and Caitríona Ní Dhuíll, Professor at the University of Salzburg, Austria and Dr. Hanna Bingel Jones from University College Cork. The articles (all open access https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14680483/2025/78/3) collected in this volume set out to explore new understandings of philology in the context of the multiple socio-ecological crises and predicaments of our time. It is with a consciousness of exhaustion, in an affective mode of overwhelm, that we rehearse the by-now familiar, yet ever-expanding list of interlocking, mutually exacerbating factors known under headings such as polycrisis, Global Ecological Change or the Anthropocene: in no particular order, these disorders include climate breakdown, species extinction, habitat destruction (including the destruction of human habitats), extreme weather events, the breaching of planetary boundaries, and the escalation of global social injustice, political polarization, violence, war and genocide. What does it mean to continue with the work of philology in times like these? Why might this work matter, both as it has always mattered and in new ways? How could it help us?

Table of contents:

Introduction: Letters in the Web of Life: Towards an Ecological Philology by Conor Brennan and Caitríona Ní Dhúill

Rewilding German Studies: Notes from an Experiment by Hanna Bingel-Jones and Tina-Karen Pusse

Conceptualising the Pedagogue as Wanderer: Wilhelm Genazino's Wenn wir Tiere wären (2011) and Felicitas Hoppe's Pigafetta (1999) by Daniela Dora and Mary Cosgrove

Refuge and the Wilded Classroom: Figure, Practice, Space by Peter Arnds, Caitríona Ní Dhúill and Elliot Sturdy

Insect Life and Letters: The Studies of Hanns Heinz Ewers and Otto and Rose Hecht by Alice Christensen and Ina Linge

‘past-past time’: Anthropocene Arrhythmia and Reparative Philology in Ulrike Draesner's Doggerland (2021) by Nicola Thomas and Katie Ritson

The Other Demosthenes: On Possible Forms of Philiation Between Ecology and Philology by Elliot Sturdy, Corinna Sauter and Thomas Traupmann

The I of Shame and Rage: Confession and Rumination at Either End of a Millennium by Sarah Bowden, Nora Grundtner and Caitríona Ní Dhúill