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Victoria Mummelthei

Victoria Mummelthei
Image Credit: privat

Seminar für Semitistik und Arabistik

Arabic Studies

teaching, researching, academic advising, communicating

Deputy academic advisor for the master’s programs Arabic Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies of the Middle East (ISME); study planning; website and communication networks

Address
Fabeckstraße 23/25
Room 1.2011
14195 Berlin
Telephone
+49 30 838 71036
Fax
+49 (0)30 838 4 71036
Email
victoria.mummelthei@fu-berlin.de
Homepage
Profile @ Linkedin
Blog "Arabistik online – Wie geht das?" (in German)

Office hours

Only by prior appointment via https://mummelthei.simplybook.it                                     

Personal room: https://fu-berlin.webex.com/meet/victoria.mummelthei

Office hours are currently held exclusively in my personal cisco webex room (https://fu-berlin.webex.com/meet/victoria.mummelthei) or via phone. 

As a student at Freie Universität Berlin, please use your ZeDat mail address for communication. 

For orientation: I process transfers of credits twice in the winter semester, once in November and once in February; this means that all credit transfer requests received by the end of October will be processed in November, all those received after that and by the end of January will be processed in February. Please also note that the study and examination offices currently require up to six weeks for processing. 

Professional Career

Since May 2022 Research associate for the coordination and further development of the Master's program Interdisciplinary Studies of the Middle East (ISME), Department of History and Cultural Studies, Freie Universität Berlin.
Since April 2021 Research associate (postdoc), Seminar for Semitic and Arabic Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, subject area: Arabic studies; fields of research: modern Arabic literature, literary and translation theory, Arab folklore, digital scholarship, Orientalism.
Winter semester 2021/22 Teaching assignment as part of the introductory and orientation study EinS@FU for a learning workshop on the topic of "Post-Migrant Literature and Arab Diaspora".
June 17, 2020 Dr. Phil. in Arabic Studies; thesis: "The Sea and the Beloved – A corpus-linguistic study of frequencies, keywords, and topics in the poetry of the Syrian writer Nizar Qabbani (1923–1998)" (summa cum laude), supervised by Beatrice Gruendler and Regula Forster.
Winter semester 2020/21 Teaching assignment as part of the introductory and orientation study EinS@FU for a learning workshop on the topic of "Arabs and the Orient in Hollywood". 
2015–2021 Research associate (praedoc), Seminar for Semitic and Arabic Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, subject area: Arabic studies; fields of research: modern Arabic literature, literary and translation theory, Arab folklore, digital scholarship.
2012–2015 Studies of Arabic language and literature, Kurdish (Northern Kurdish/Kurmancî) language and literature, poetics of translation (courses in frame of August Wilhelm von Schlegel Guest Lectures), Freie Universität Berlin, degree: Master of Arts, thesis: Sadness in the love poetry of Nizar Qabbani
2011–2014 Project assistance, Institute for Kurdish Studies, Berlin, field of work: dictionaries (Central Kurdish/Soranî and Northern Kurdish/Kurmancî)
2012–2014 Student assistant, Institute for Iranian Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, area of studies: Kurdish studies
2010–2012 Student assistant, Institute of Islamic Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, area of studies: ERC-project Rediscovering Theological Rationalism in the Medieval World of Islam, rsearch unit Intellectual History of the Islamicate World (under the direction of Prof. Dr. Sabine Schmidtke)
2008–2012 Studies of Arabic language and literature, Persian and Kurdish (Central Kurdish/Soranî), poetics of translation (courses in frame of August Wilhelm von Schlegel Guest Lectures), Freie Universität Berlin, degree: Bachelor of Arts, thesis: The "uncanny" woman in Surat Yusuf
2005/6 Stay abroad in United Arab Emirates

Academic Administration

Since August 2021 Change Agent in the framework of the project FUtureIT
Since April 2020 Deputy academic advisor master's programme Interdisciplinary Studies of the Middle East
Since February 2019 Representative of the research associates within the Department Council of the Department of History and Cultural Studies; also deputy representative in the teaching committee
Since July 2018 Member of a working group on the conception of an English-language master's program in Arabic, Iranian, Islamic, Jewish and Semitic Studies as well as Turkology.
Since 2017 Representative of the research associates within the Training Committee of the Department of History and Cultural Studies
2017–2019 Member of  the Digital Humanities working group of the Department of History and Cultural Studies

Since April 2016

Responsible for internet and Facebook pages of Arabic Studies (as well as the affiliated ERC projects between 2018 and 2022)

Since April 2015

Deputy academic advisor master's programme Arabic Studies

Conference and event organisation

Since 2016 regularly June of each year

Planning and coordinating the programme of events for the Seminar for Semitic and Arabic Studies within the framework of the Long Night of Sciences (Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften)
March 2018 Documents and Manuscripts in the Arab-Islamic World, The Seventh International Society of Arabic Papyrology (ISAP) conference, co-organized with the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Humboldt Universität, Papyrus Collection of the Egyptian Museum, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

Fundings

2018 Funding for an innovative teaching project by the SUPPORT für die Lehre of Freie Universität Berlin
Seminar "Thousand and One Nights"
Summer 2018
Co-developed and co-taught with Kathrin Wittler of the Peter Szondi Institute for Comparative Literature, Freie Universität Berlin
50 students from both Arabic Studies and Comparative Literatures
Two integrated poster sessions

 

Note: Starting in the winter semester 2022/2023, I will offer courses especially on exemplary texts of global cultural studies and theory and their relation to Arabic literature, culture, language, and Arabic studies as a scholarly discpline, open to all interested students.

Each semester there will be at least one course with a reading of a currently much-discussed text (e.g., Srinivasan's The Right to Sex), as well as one course with a reading of a (possibly canonical or classic) text on science (e.g., Popper's Logic of Research) or a "classic" in cultural or social studies (e.g., Bourdieu's Distinction or Eagelton's Introduction to Literary Theory).

Courses in winter 2022/23

Courses in winter 2021/22

Courses in winter 2020/2021

Courses in summer 2020

  • 14286 Semimar
    Araber und Orient in Hollywood (Victoria Mummelthei)
    Zeit: Di 21.04. 16:00-17:00 (Erster Termin: 21.04.2020)
    Ort: Online! Blackboard + Cisco WebEx
  • 14293 Hauptseminar
    Arabistik online - wie geht das? (Victoria Mummelthei)
    Zeit: Di 21.04. 12:00-13:00 (Erster Termin: 21.04.2020)
    Ort: Online! Blackboard + Cisco WebEx

Courses in winter 2019/2020

Courses in summer 2019

  • 14286 Lektürekurs
    Dichtung von Nizar Qabbani (Victoria Mummelthei)
    Zeit: Mo 10:00-12:00 (Erster Termin: 08.04.2019)
    Ort: 2.2059 Seminarraum (Fabeckstr. 23-25)

Courses in summer 2018

  • 14282 Seminar
    Tausendundeine Nacht (Victoria Mummelthei)
    Zeit: Di 12:00-14:00 (Erster Termin: 17.04.2018)
    Ort: 2.2058 Seminarraum (Fabeckstr. 23-25)

Courses in winter 2017/18

Courses in summer 2017

  • 14285 Vertiefungsseminar
    Koran und Literaturtheorie (Victoria Mummelthei)
    Zeit: Mo 14:00-16:00 (Erster Termin: 24.04.2017)
    Ort: 1.2052 Seminarraum (Fabeckstr. 23-25)

Courses in winter 2016/17

Courses in summer 2016

Courses in winter 2015/16

Courses in summer 2015


Inter- and transdisciplinary focus:

  • Environmental Humanities,
  • cognitive linguistics and metaphor and emotion research,
  • Translation studies,
  • Eroticism, sexuality, body, gender, social relations in literature, language, culture,
  • Sociology of science and metascience,
  • Distant Reading and Visualizations of Data. 

Areas of focus within Arabic Studies and at its intersections with other disciplines:

  • Language and Didactics of Arabic Studies,
  • Arabic studies as cultural, literary, and linguistic studies,
  • linguistics of Arabic in Arabic literature,
  • Arabic literature as part of global literature,
  • Literature of the Arab Diaspora,
  • Culture of the Gulf region,
  • Orientalism in literature, music, film, games.

Other areas of interest:

  • writing with Artificial Intelligence (AI),
  • instructional design,
  • curriculum development,
  • academic self-governance and advancement of the academic system,
  • Gamification of and in cultural studies,
  • Science communication,
  • Film Studies,
  • Game Studies,
  • lyrics as literature,
  • political theory,
  • psychology.

Postdoc project

currently in the process of contemplation

PhD project (published 2021)

http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/refubium-30590

The thesis evolved from exploring a corpus of 1021 poems from 44 volumes of poetry by the Syrian poet and diplomat Nizar Qabbani (1923–1998). Statistical investigations with the corpus analysis tools Voyant and SketchEngine reinforced some of the ‘prejudices’ that both Arab and non-Arab readers and scholars usually harbour towards Qabbani’s texts: That they are mainly about women and love. However, a distant reading using computations of frequencies, statistical keywords and topics yielded an unexpected result: The sea (Arabic al-baḥr) is the most frequently referenced geophysical entity; in 1021 texts, the type al-baḥr ‘the sea’ appears 265 times, and derivatives of √bḥr, whose semantics are mainly related to the sea, 540 times, distributed over 286 of the 1021 texts. The review of these 286 texts revealed that √bḥr-words have a particular effect when they’re used in the microcosm of a love relationship to characterise the addressee – the beloved woman. 75 poems show that √bḥr-words can be employed in three ways to conceptualise the beloved: (1) she’s equated with the sea or marine and maritime entities such as fish and harbours; (2) she has power over the sea, dominates it or even possesses it; (3) her body – especially the eyes – is associated with the sea, or with the marine and maritime. A close reading of 39 of these 75 poems supported by data visualisations with RAWgraphs evidenced that, cognitive-linguistically in the sense of George Lakoff, various paraphiers of the source domain SEA come to effect when conceptualising the beloved as a target domain; most analogies, however, result from sensually perceptible qualities such as the colour of the sea. While in Arab literary discourse the focus is more on the land, Qabbani’s poetry bares a holistic understanding of the sea – including marine flora and fauna, maritime aspects of seafaring, and the seascape – which inspires to read Arabic literature ecocentrically in general and thalassologically in particular.