MSchmitz_2016Dr. habil. Markus Schmitz

Associate Professor

German-Jordanian University
School of Applied Humanities & Social Sciences
P.O. Box 35247
Amman 11180
Jordan

Vertrauensdozent der Heinrich Böll Stiftung

PTTS Research Associate   

E-mail: markus.schmitz@uni-muenster.de

 


Markus Schmitz read Middle Eastern Studies, Political Sciences, and International Law at Bochum University and Cairo University and Cultural Studies at Potsdam University. He holds an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from Bochum University and completed his Ph.D. thesis Kulturkritik ohne Zentrum: Edward W. Said und die Kontrapunkte kritischer Dekolonisation (Cultural Criticism without a Centre: Edward W. Said and the Counterpoints of Critical Decolonization) at Münster University (English Literary and Cultural Studies).

Between 2009 and 2016 he was Assistant Professor at the English Department of Münster University, affiliated to the chair of English, Postcolonial & Media Studies. Between 2016 and 2020 he was co-director of the international M.A. programme National and Transnational Studies: Literature – Culture – Language. Since 2017 Markus was Senior Lecturer (Akademischer Oberrat) of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Theory, and Media Studies. In Winter term 2017/18 he was appointed Vertretungsprofessor (Stand-in Professor) of the Chair of English, Postcolonial and Media Studies. In 2020 Markus left Münster to join Lebanese University’s Doctoral School of Literature, Humanities and Social Sciences. Since 2024 he is Associate Professor at School of Applied Humanities & Social Sciences at German-Jordanian University, Amman.

Markus has taught Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Transnational and Transcultural Studies, British and American (Ethnic) Literatures and Global Literatures in English, Postcolonial Theory, Media Studies, Video- and Performance Art, Aesthetic Theory, Subaltern Historiography, Gender and Queer Studies, and Critical Spatial Theory.

He was a scholarship holder of the Heinrich Böll Foundation and is member of GAPS (Gesellschaft für Anglophone Poskoloniale Studien). In 2012 he was fellow at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK), Vienna.

In 2016 Markus filed his Habilitation thesis Transgressive Truths and Flattering Lies: The Poetics and Ethics of Anglophone Arab Representations and received the Venia Legendi “Vergleichende Anglophone Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften (Comparative Anglophone Literary and Cultural Studies).”

Research interests include Cultural Imaginaries of Refuge in Critical Forced Migration and Border Regime Studies, (Anglophone) Arab Representations, The Black Mediterranean, Theories and Methods of Cross-Cultural Comparison, (Trans-)Migrancy and Relational Diasporic Studies, Global Comparativism/Globalectics, Critical Cosmopolitanism, Travelling Theories, Cultural Materialism, Literature’s Worldliness and Literary Worlding, (Post-)Orientalism/(Post-)Occidentalism, Colonial Discourse Analysis, Imperial Amnesia, Cultural Resistance, Counter-Journalism and the Vlogo-/Blogosphere, Intermediality, Concept and Performance Art, Artistic Research, (Counter-)Archival Studies, Queer Theory, Critical Urban Studies and Spatial Theory, Psychoanalysis and Cultural Criticism.

He was a member of Uni Münster research groups "Open Cities" and "Transmigration".

His current research projects include a comparative study on “Middle Eastern and African Refugee Imaginaries.”

Although Markus left the English Department, he remains affiliated to the PTTS team and the English Department as an associate researcher.

Publications include


Books and edited volumes

© © Cover illustration: Larissa Sansour, »Space Earth«, C-Print (2009) / transcript

Transgressive Truths and Flattering Lies: The Poetics and Ethics of Anglophone Arab Representations.

Bielefeld: transcript, 2020.

Praise for Transgressive Truths and Flattering Lies:

A constant theme in Markus Schmitz’s excellent book, Transgressive Truths and Flattering Lies: The Poetics and Ethics of Anglophone Arab Representations, is the idea of movement: “setting in motion,” “transmigrations,” “flights,” and “turnovers.” And indeed, the book itself sets in motion a mobile transnational conversation that shuttles between time-periods, between regions, between texts, and between maître à penser. Transgressive Truths and Flattering Lies masterfully combines fine-grained textual analysis with meta-theoretical concerns to better anatomize the paradoxical representation of Arab bodies and voices, at once hypervisible and silenced. The book’s diasporic and interdisciplinary framework and impressive spatio-temporal scope goes hand in hand with a lively, insightful, and compelling examination of the cross-border interconnectedness of texts and cultural practices.

Ella Shohat, author of Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices

New York University


This title is available in print and as an open access e-book:

Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-5048-8

PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-5048-2

Find more information and get access to the e-book

A four-part radio feature on Edward Said


Auf der Suche nach einem neuen Humanismus
[In Search for a New Humanism]

Written by Nikolaus Halmer; with contributions by Markus Schmitz, Étienne Balibar, Judith Butler, Rosi Braidotti, Mariam Said, and others.
Broadcasted by ORF-Radiokolleg, October 14-17, 2013. For editorial details please see: http://oe1.orf.at/programm/351647

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Essays


»How to Respond to the Unspoken? On Cross-Cultural Responsibility« العربیة للبحث العلمي وعلوم الاتصال الرابطة (Journal of the Arab Association of Scientific Research and Communication Studies), Special Issue on "Social Responsibility", 7 (2022), 154-162.

»The Fiction of Justice: Human Smuggling in European Law and Middle Eastern Refugee Narratives.« Symbolism. An International Annual of Critical Aesthetics, Special Issue Law and Literature 21 (2021): 175-195.

»"Sei ein Mann, Suleika!": Orientalistische Objektbesetzungen in der symbolischen Imagination von Geflohenen« Orientalismus heute. Perspektiven arabisch-deutscher Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft. Ed. Stephanie Bremerich, Dieter Burdorf and Abdalla Eldimagh. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021. 49-66.

»Imagination und Flucht-Migration: Künstlerisch-literarische Kontrapunkte zur dominanten Fiktion des Faktischen« BeDeutungen dekolonisieren. Spuren von (antimuslimischem) Rassismus. Ed. Iman Attia & Mariam Popal. Münster:
Unrast, 2018. 224-242.

»Das Begehren der ›Flüchtlinge‹. Überlegungen zur Psycho(patho)logie der deutschen Flüchtlingsdebatte nach dem Märchen grenzenloser Hilfsbereitschaft« Das Argument – Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Sozialwissenschaften, No. 319, Winter 2016, 694-706.

»Lire Edward Said en arabe: identité de lecteur et transgression interprétative« Théories intercontinentales – Voyages du comparatisme postcolonial. Ed. Pascale Rabault-Feuerhahn. Paris: Démopolis, 2014. 107-126. 

[with Marga Munkelt, Silke Stroh & Mark Stein]. »Directions of Translocation – Towards a Critical Spatial Thinking in Postcolonial Studies« Introduction to Postcolonial Translocations. Cultural Representation and Critical Spatial Thinking. Ed. Marga Munkelt, Markus Schmitz, Silke Stroh & Mark Stein. Cross/Cultures series. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2013. xiii-lxxix.

»Blurring Images -- Articulations of Arab American Crossovers« Postcolonial Translocations. Cultural Representation and Critical Spatial Thinking. Ed. Marga Munkelt, Markus Schmitz, Silke Stroh & Mark Stein. Cross/Cultures series. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2013. 321-350.

»Verwackelte Perspektiven: Kritische Korrelationen in der zeitgenössischen arabisch-amerikanischen Kulturproduktion« Kulturen in Bewegung. Beiträge zur Theorie und Praxis der Transkulturalität. Ed. Dorothee Kimmich & Schamma Schahadat. Bielefeld: transcript, 2012. 279-302.

»Archäologien des okzidentalen Fremdwissens und kontrapunktische Komplettierungen« Schlüsselwerke der Postcolonial Studies. Ed. Julia Reuter & Alexandra Karentzos. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, 2012. 109-120.

»Re-Reading Said in Arabic: (Other)Worldly Counterpoints« Edward Saidˈs Translocations: Essays in Secular Criticism. Ed. Tobias Döring & Mark Stein. Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures. London & New York: Routledge, 2012. 97-113.

»Spatiality, Gender, and the Boundaries of National Gaze in the Current Spectacle of Integration in Germany« Hybrid Cultures, Nervous States: Britain and Germany in a (Post)Colonial World. Ed. Ulrike Lindner, Maren Möhring, Mark Stein & Silke Stroh. Cross/Cultures series. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2011. 253-275.

»Orient« Wie Rassismus aus Wörtern spricht -- (K)erben des Kolonialismus im Wissensarchiv deutsche Sprache. Ein kritisches Nachschlagewerk. Ed. Susan Arndt & Nadia Ofuatey-Alazard. Münster: Unrast, 2011. 477-490.

»Hinter den Fassaden der Integration: Räumlichkeit, Gender und die Inszenierung von Blickgrenzen in einem Türken-Tatort« Tatort Stadt. Mediale Topographien eines Fernsehklassikers. Ed. Julika Griem & Sebastian Scholz. Frankfurt & New York: Campus 2010. 103-119.

»Edward Said's 'Orientalism' in Arab Discourse: Instrumentalised on All Sides.« Qantara 31 December 2008, 1 January 2009 [published in Arabic, English, German, and Turkish].

[with Kien Nghi Ha]. »Der nationalpädagogische Impetus der deutschen Integrations(dis)kurse im Spiegel post-/kolonialer Kritik.« Cultural Studies und Pädagogik: Kritische Artikulationen. Ed. Paul Mecheril, Monika Witsch. Bielefeld: transcript, 2006. 225-262.
   
»Orientalismus, Gender und die binäre Matrix kultureller Repräsentationen.« Der Orient, die Fremde: Positionen zeitgenössischer Kunst und Literatur. Ed. Regina Göckede, Alexandra Karentzos. Bielefeld: transcript, 2006. 39-66.

»Die transkulturelle Wirkung Edward Saids. Potentiale und Ambivalenzen in der west-östlichen Rezeption eines postkolonialen Kritikers.« Der Nahe Osten – Ein Teil Europas: Reflexionen zu Raum- und Kulturkonzeptionen im modernen Nahen Osten. Ed. Atef Botros. Würzburg: Ergon, 2006. 105-34.