Barbara Mittler (born 15 February 1968 in Hagen, West Germany) is a German

sinologist Sinology, also referred to as China studies, is a subfield of area studies or East Asian studies involved in social sciences and humanities research on China. It is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of the Chinese civilizatio ...

. She is co-director of the

Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context" The Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context" is a research facility funded in the framework of the German Universities Excellence Initiative of the federal state governments of Germany since October 2017. It is a trans- and inte ...

Early life and education

Barbara Mittler was born 15 February 1968, in

Hagen Hagen () is a city in the States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia, in western Germany, on the southeastern edge of the Ruhr area, 15 km south of Dortmund, where the rivers Lenne and Volme meet the Ruhr (river), Ruhr. In 2023, the ...

, West Germany. She is the daughter of

flautist The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...

Uta Mittler and librarian Elmar Mittler. Mittler received her B.A. and M.A. from

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

and her Ph.D. from

Heidelberg University Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg (; ), is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Founded in 1386 on instruction of Pope Urban VI, Heidelberg is Germany's oldest unive ...

. She also studied Chinese at the

Mandarin Training Center Mandarin Training Center (MTC; ) was established in 1956. This center is a Chinese as a second language institution run by National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) in Taipei, Taiwan and located at NTNU Daan Campus. MTC is the oldest and larg ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

Career and research

After her dissertation in 1994, Mittler worked as an assistant professor at

, where she was

habilitated Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland and some other European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellen ...

in 1998. She continued as an associate professor. In 2004, she became full professor at the Institute of Chinese Studies, which she managed as director until autumn 2012. At the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context”, Mittler became speaker of the research area “Public Spheres” in 2007. Since November 2012, she is the Cluster's co-director. Barbara Mittler is a member of the German Academy of Sciences LEOPOLDINA. In 2000, Mittler was awarded the Heinz-Maier-Leibnitz-Prize of the

German Research Foundation The German Research Foundation ( ; DFG ) is a German research funding organization, which functions as a self-governing institution for the promotion of science and research in the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2019, the DFG had a funding bud ...

and the

Federal Ministry of Education and Research The Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (; abbreviated BMFTR) is a cabinet-level ministry of Germany. It is headquartered in Bonn, with an office in Berlin. The Ministry provides funding for research projects and institutions (aim ...

for her outstanding research. Between 2002 and 2004, she held the Heisenberg Fellowship awarded by the German Research Foundation. In 2009, Mittler received the Henry Allen Moe Prize of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...

for her paper ''Popular Propaganda? Art and Culture in Revolutionary China''. In this paper, Mittler addresses the question why the items of propaganda of

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; traditionally Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Mao Tse-tung. (26December 18939September 1976) was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in ...

's time, a tragic period of suffering, are now popular in China, and why Mao has become a mythical figure. Mittler's former desire to become a practicing musician (she plays the

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

and the

violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...

) led her to explore Chinese avant-garde music and fueled her passion for Chinese culture. Her research focuses on a wide range of topics such as Chinese music, Taiwanese literary and cultural history, encyclopedias and comics, Chinese women's magazines, visuality and

historiography Historiography is the study of the methods used by historians in developing history as an academic discipline. By extension, the term ":wikt:historiography, historiography" is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiog ...

satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposin ...

and national heroes.

Personal life

She is married to the classical

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also defined as the study of ...

Thomas A. Schmitz.

Selected works

* ''Dangerous Tunes: The Politics of Chinese Music in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China since 1949''. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz (Opera sinologica 3), 1997. * ''A Newspaper for China? Power, Identity and Change in Shanghai’s News Media (1872-1912)''. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center (distributed by Harvard University Press) (Harvard East Asian Monographs Series 226), 2004. * ''A Continuous Revolution: Making Sense of Cultural Revolution Culture''. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center (distributed by Harvard University Press) (Harvard East Asian Monographs Series 343), 2012."Publications"
Institut für Sinologie Universität Heidelberg. Retrieved: December 19, 2012

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mittler, Barbara 1968 births Living people People from Hagen German sinologists Academic staff of Heidelberg University Alumni of Mansfield College, Oxford Members of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina