Yingwei Mu

Growing up in China, I began learning German when I was 13. During my undergraduate studies, a course about intellectual history aroused my interests in Walter Benjamin’s writings, which were further developed to interests in post-structuralism when I worked on the papers about his philosophy of language and translation and its relevance to Derrida’s thoughts during my graduate studies. While studying as an exchange student in Erlangen, I mainly took courses in German linguistics and didactics. In my Bachelor thesis I did a discourse linguistic analysis of German news articles to illuminate the constructive power of language in the mass media.

Drawn by the beautiful memories in Erlangen and dreaming of becoming an excellent translator, I went to Germany again and started research in the fields of Chinese literature as well as translation theory and practice. My Master thesis researched the translation of the classical Chinese poetry of Song-Period, Huajianci. Specifically, enlightened by my mentor Dr. Marc Hermann, German sinologist and translator, I better understood the magic of language and literature and situated my interests in modern Chinese science-fiction and women’s literature.

Here I will further work at the intersections of German studies and China studies, mainly focusing on the post-structuralist elements as well as the identity political issues of gender and race in literary works and their translations. I’m also very interested in the universal topics like futurology and eco-criticism.