Affiliated Researcher
Markus Schmitz is Visiting Professor and DAAD-Consultant at the Doctoral School of Literature, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Lebanese University, Beirut.
Trained in Middle Eastern Studies, English Literary and Cultural Studies, and Comparative Literature his decisively interdisciplinary work is located at the intersections of Transnational Middle Eastern Studies and Relational Diasporic Arab Studies. Among his research interests are Anglophone Arab Representations, Forced Migration and Border Regimes, Relational Diasporic Formations, Theories and Practices of Cross-Cultural Comparison, Cultural Resistance, and Decolonial Arts.
His current project is a book-length study with the working title “Escape to Europe: Comparative Refugee Imaginaries.”
My current research undertaking traces selected post-1948 Middle Eastern and North African imaginaries of refugee migration in literature, the visual arts, film, popular music, and the blogosphere.
Publications include Kulturkritik ohne Zentrum: Edward W. Said und die Kontrapunkte kritischer Dekolonisation (2008), Postcolonial Translocations: Cultural Representation and Critical Spatial Thinking (ed., 2013) and Transgressive Truths and Flattering Lies: The Poetics and Ethics of Anglophone Arab Representations (2020).
