PHILOLOGY NOW

EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION

Valeria López Fadul & Courtney Weiss Smith

History and Theory 64, no. 4 (2025)
”Philology Now” Theme Issue

In this introduction to the “Philology Now” theme issue, we make a case for “philology” as a useful sign under which to consider the ways historians are already working with words in their efforts to understand the past. Doing so, we recognize that “philology” has been variously defined. Rather than being normative or prescriptive about what philology entails, we proceed from a historical awareness that, in many of its uses, the word binds interrelated concerns of language, history, and method. The articles featured in this issue take up this nexus as providing opportunities for theory of history. Together, they demonstrate how attention to philology's methods of treating words in history enables self-reflective work on disciplinary formations and their political legacies, on the relationships between language and power, and on temporality itself. It also enables innovative new approaches to words and concepts.