Dr. 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.
