Barbara Mittler

Professor Mittler is the Modern China Chair and Director at the Institute of Chinese Studies, University of Heidelberg and Speaker of Research Area B “Public Spheres” in the Cluster of Excellence at the University of Heidelberg titled “Asia and Europe in a Global Context: Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows.”

In the “A New Approach to the Popular Press in China” project, Dr Mittler is concerned with uncovering the changing meanings of a conspicuous figure in the so-called new woman, or xin nu xing.

Professor Mittler began her studies of Sinology at the University of Oxford (MA Oxon 1990). During her studies, she spent longer research periods in Taiwan, the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong and at Harvard University. Her PhD (1994) and her Habilitation (1998) is from Heidelberg where she has worked as researcher (1994-), Assistant Professor (1996-) and Associate Professor (1999-). In 2000 she received the Heinz-Maier-Leibnitz-Prize for young and outstanding scholars by the German Research Foundation and the German Ministry of Culture. Between 2002-2004 she was a recipient of the Heisenberg Fellowship awarded by the German Research Foundation. In 2004 she became Full Professor at Heidelberg University. Since 2007 she has served in the Steering Committee and as Speaker and Coordinator for one of the four research areas in the one and only Cluster of Excellence in the Humanities at Heidelberg University.

Barbara Mittler has published widely on Chinese avantgarde music (Dangerous Tunes: The Politics of Chinese Music in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the People's Republic of China since 1949, Harrassowitz 1997) und on the early Chinese press (A Newspaper for China? Power, Identity and Change in China's News-Media, 1872-1912, Harvard University Press, 2004). Her books have become standard reading in the field of contemporary Chinese music and the early Chinese Press, respectively. She has recently finished a third book-length study on cultural and artistic production during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), which approaches this complex period making use of methods from Cultural Studies and Oral History. Currently, she is engaged in writing a history of the tropes of New Man and New Woman in China’s long twentieth century.