cn-mittler-projekte

My interest in privileging visual sources in the writing of history has been sparked in a number of joint projects on Visual Cultures in East Asia originally conceived by Christian Henriot. It is our contention that images are constitutive rather than merely reflective or illustrative of the histories that produce them. In these projects, therefore, we attempt to use images in order to interrupt the flow of text-based historical narratives, to ask new questions, and thus to produce new theoretical and conceptual arguments and narratives. Along these lines, I am currently engaged in writing a visual history of Mao (Reading Mao: The Making of a Global Icon) which continues my earlier work on MaoArt in A Continuous Revolution.

My interest in Mao as a Global Icon has been sparked and invigorated by a transregional dialogue with a historian of India from Duke University, Sumathi Ramaswamy. In our collaborative project No Parallel? The Fatherly Bodies of Gandhi and Mao, we interrogate how these two paradigmatic “peasant” nationalists have been transformed into hyper-visible “bio-icons.” Consciously adopting a dialogic and somewhat counterintuitive approach (something I have called Transcultural Comparison) that draws together within a single frame two “Asian” life trajectories that have more often than not been kept apart (No Parallel!), the project considers how critical images and signature image-events have contributed to a complex interplay between the iconization and the demonization of these two men in their own countries and on a global scale.

Our joint project builds on a number of forays in this field dedicated to understanding the transcultural travels and reach of images and art practices across Asia and Europe (Archiving Mothers and Fathers of the Nation in Europe and Asia: Developing a Digitized Prototype of Braided Pictorial Histories, Transcultural Visuality culminating in a summer school Seeing Matters). We have over the years also co-organized a number of workshops (e.g. Spectacle & Sovereignty: Stately Bodies on Display, Stanford Humanities Center and Artful Bodies: Charisma and the Aesthetics of Power, Heidelberg Center for Transcultural Studies) and an Association of Asian Studies Double Panel in March 2017 “Death Becomes Them: The Posthumous Lives of Fatherly Bodies”. At all of these occasions, we have broadened our comparative scope even further and discussed Gandhi and Mao in the context of many other “Fathers of the Nation”—from George Washington to Chiang Kaishek, from Charlemagne to Jinnah and Nelson Mandela.

Finally, in 2019, for the opening of the Center of Asian and Transcultural Studies CATS, we organized an exhibition featuring the Swiss photojournalist Walter Bosshard and his work on Gandhi and Mao in the 1930s:.

Inspired by the inter- and transdisciplinary dialogues at the Heidelberg Center for Transcultural Studies, Transcultural Comparison and the development of alternative modes of writing histories, has become one of my primary occupations recently. Already now, many new and relativizing narratives (provincializing not just Europe, but men, the elites, the “West” etc.) have been written. My own attempts at writing history not just from text, but from image, music, matter, as well, goes in the same direction. The crucial task for the future will be, however, to establish these new narratives not as “alternative” narratives that, by implication, prescribe new orthodox norms, but instead, as “narratives-in-common.” Such narratives are radically more than alternative narratives. They are able to discard apologetic (catching-up) or triumphant (we have had it all along) modes of writing alternative histories that have been criticized frequently. These narratives no longer lead to “deficient” histories. Yet, to write them is not an easy task (see my discussion in All Things Transregional?).

In a recently published book co-written with Historian Thomas Maissen Why China did not have a Renaissance – and why that matters: An interdisciplinary Dialogue (Critical Readings in Global Intellectual History, Band 1, hrsg. von Susan Richter, Sebastian Meurer, De Gruyter: Oldenbourg, 2018 [Blog | Podcast]) I argue that while China may not have had “The Renaissance” it had something else, a “Chinese” Renaissance which happened according to its own rules. Thus moving toward greater differentiation, however, one realizes that Europe did not have a “The Renaissance”, either, it had but a “European” Renaissance. Read in a global context—and in interdisciplinary dialogue—all History thus becomes regional history and accordingly, there are many histories of Renaissance to tell, in this global context. On the other hand, if we are able to accept that actors all over the world may have been engaged equally in the writing of Renaissance, and if we make this the basis of our writing of a new and global history, which no longer takes the European case as unique and all other historical experiences as derivative, but instead, shows an interest in these other, as well as the European experiences, as regionally specific and thus “authentic” histories, yet part of one global experience, we can move from these specific histories back to writing History again: History-in-common.

This approach of viewing Chinese history in a global context has become crucial in envisaging a new project that is designed to introduce the teaching of History-in-common in secondary schools. The project, entitled China-Schul-Akademie—Mehr vom A/anderen w/Wissen: (Lehr- und Lern-)Dialoge mit China argues that since the rise of the global south can no longer be denied, it is visible everywhere—in commerce, finance, politics and education—and China undeniably plays a leading role at least some knowledge about and understanding of China is crucial for anyone engaged in politics, economics or the media. But this kind of understanding needs to be built, from the base, not just in our universities but, more importantly, in our schools where encounters with China still remain extremely rare. This is due to the fact that currently, German schools have only very few qualified personnel available able to teach China, or Asia more broadly, her history, politics, culture, or even her many languages. The project aims to create a program which will allow us to integrate the history, the politics, and the (im-material) cultural heritage (language, literature, religion, music, philosophy) of this important world region into the curricula of German schools at all levels.

To study China, as well as other regions of the global South, is to foster a curiosity and an openness toward the Other. We would argue that this is crucially important both for teachers (and for students) today as well as of the future, facing increasingly internationalized student generations. In intensive dialogue and exchange, we will try to begin to understand the respective other „in-parallel“ and „on-a-par“ and to use the perspective of others in order to test ourselves and our own epistemic encrustations: we hope to raise an understanding that by knowing more about the other, we are acquring another perspective on what we know ourselves...

The project can build on many years of experience and funding: in 2006 already, we started with our Schulteam and just a few AGs, in 2007 the team won the prize Geist begeistert (BMBF). We then moved on to creating a Beifach Chinesisch Lehramt ( GymPO since 2010), the earliest such offer in Baden-Württemberg. Ever since we have been lobbying also to offer a Hauptfach and have been able to do so since 2015, through the  polyvalent BA Ostasienwissenschaften/Sinologie and the  MEd Sinologie/Chinesisch (which started in 2018). Alongside these activities, we have also been regularly engaged in the Kinderuni and cooperated with the CATS Schülerlabor, and have created, over the years, an extensive and well-frequented database with online modules for teaching Chinese history, philosophy, politics, literature and society.

We are now at a point of moving up one step: having institutionalized teacher training for teaching Chinese language and culture in secondary schools, we now need to begin to institutionalize the teaching of Chinese contents to students of those disciplines taught in school, but primarily focused on Europe (e.g. Music, History, Politics (Gemeinschaftskunde), Philosophy, Philology and Literature). The project will also build a substantive digital platform Chinaperspektiven not only making available teaching and learning materials at various levels, but also MOOCs and other online tools and learning apps as well as a virtual classroom for direct communication with Chinese partners.

For more information, please take a look at the list of my current and past projects.