Victoria Mummelthei
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); deputy academic advisors BA Arabic Studies; study planning; website and communication networks
Room 1.2011
14195 Berlin
Office hours
Only by prior appointment via https://calendly.com/mummelthei/meet
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, unless otherwise agreed.As a student at Freie Universität Berlin, please use your zedat mail address for communication.
For orientation: For orientation: I process transfers of ECTS twice a semester: in the winter semester in November and February, in the summer semester in May and July. Please also note that the study and examination offices currently require up to six weeks for processing.
I answer emails Monday through Thursday 10am-3pm.
No office hours in March, August, September.
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 April 2023 | Deputy academic advisors bachelor's program Arabic Studies |
| 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 |
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Since April 2016 |
Responsible for internet and Facebook pages of Arabic Studies (as well as the affiliated ERC projects between 2018 and 2022) |
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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 |
- Biopolitics and Diasbility: Navigating Jasbir K. Puar's "The Right to Maim" in the Middle East (Reading Course, winter 2023/2024)
- From Campus to Cafés: Writing the Middle East for Your Daily Read (Methods Exercise, winter 2023/24)
- Eurocentrism and Modernity: Samir Amin's Analyses of the Near East as an Actor in World History (seminar, summer 2023)
- Communicating Research in ISME (Colloquium, summer 2023)
- Orient and Oriental Studies between Magic and Criticism: a Critical Introduction to Arabic Studies through the Theories of Edward Said (Seminar, winter 2022/23)
- Lecture Series "Stuying the Middle East" - Transfers and Translations (Organization, Lecture, winter 2022/23).
- Against Boring Academic Texts: Methods of Studying the Middle East (Methods Exercise, winter 2022/23)
- Reading Amia Srinivasan's The Right to Sex (reading course, winter 2022/23)
- Communicating Research in ISME (Colloquium, winter 2022/23).
- Introduction to Arabic Studies through Critical Readings from Edward Said to Gayatri Spivak (seminar, winter 2021/22)
- Postmigrant Literature and the Arab Diaspora (Learning Workshop in the framework of EinS@FU, winter 2021/22)
- Reading poetry from Syria circa 2011 (reading course, winter 2020/21)
- Arabs and the Orient in Hollywood (learning workshop as part of EinS@FU, winter 2020/21)
- Arabic Studies online - how does it work? (advanced seminar, summer 2020)
- Translating from and into Arabic (practical language exercise, summer 2020)
- Orient in Film (Seminar, summer 2020)
- Arabic Studies as Literature, Culture and Linguistics (Colloquium, Summer 2020)
- Scholarly work in Oriental studies as literature, culture and linguistics (miscellaneous, winter 2019/20)
- Poetry of Nizar Qabbani (reading course, summer 2019)
- One Thousand and One Nights (seminar, summer 2018)
- Introduction to modern Arabic literature: authors - themes - trends (basic course, winter 2017/18)
- Qur'an and Literary Theory (advanced seminar, summer 2017)
- Introduction to Semitic/Arabic Studies - Orient - Oriental Studies - Orientalism (seminar, winter 2016/17)
- Arabic Folklore and Traditions (seminar, summer 2016)
- Modern Arabic literature and translation studies (seminar, winter 2015/16)
- The Girls of Riyadh: Femininity, Eroticism, and Taboos in Novels by Saudi Arabian Authors (Seminar, 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.