Beatrice Gründler

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Beatrice Gründler (also Beatrice Gruendler ; born August 24, 1964 in Offenburg ) is a German Arabist and professor of Arabic studies at the Free University of Berlin .

Shortly

Beatrice Gründler is an internationally renowned Arabist. After her studies as a scholarship holder of the German National Academic Foundation at the Universities of Strasbourg, Tübingen and Harvard, where she received her doctorate with distinction in 1995, she taught at Yale University and in 2014 accepted a professorship at the Free University of Berlin.

Her main research interests are Arabic writing and book culture, classical Arabic literature and its socio-historical contexts, as well as the role of Arabic literature as a link between Asia and Europe. Your work is characterized by the innovative combination of methodology, analytics and philological competence.

She has extensive experience in interdisciplinary and international cooperation. In this context she was 2010–11 Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and 2016–17 President of the American Oriental Society . At the Free University of Berlin she is a member of the Excellence Council and board member of the Dahlem Humanities Center and a member of the expert group in the network of Berlin universities. She is Principal Investigator of the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School for Literary Studies and the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies. There, together with Dimitri Gutas , Professor of Graeco-Arabic Studies at Yale University and Einstein Visiting Fellow, she heads a project funded by the Einstein Foundation Berlin for a multi-lingual edition of the poetics of Aristotle, including research into the cultural context of the Arabic , Hebrew and Syrian and Latin translations.

She received renowned science prizes such as the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation in 2017 and an Advanced Grant (for 2016) from the European Research Council (ERC) in the same year .

Since 2015 she has been investigating the history of the texts, origins and effects of the Kalīla and Dimna collection of fables , which came to Europe from India via the Arab world . It is one of the earliest Arabic prose writings and a central text in Arabic wisdom literature from the 8th century AD, which was translated into around forty languages ​​in Europe and Asia from the Middle Ages to the 19th century and which had a decisive influence on European literature Has. In a pilot project as part of an e-learning / e-research project, she created the basis for a critical digital edition of this prince mirror. In the subsequent ERC project, she researches the dissemination and transformation of the work in Arabic and world literature.

Career

Beatrice Gründler studied Arabic, Semitic and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Strasbourg , Tübingen and at Harvard University , where she also received her doctorate in 1995.

After a visiting professorship at Dartmouth College , New Hampshire , she taught at Yale University from 1996 , initially as an assistant professor, and from 2002 as professor of Arabic literature.

In the academic year 2010/2011 Gründler pursued the project “The Age of Communication in Islam” as a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin .

In 2014 she returned permanently to Germany , where she has been researching and teaching at the Free University of Berlin ever since .

Scientific focus

Beatrice Gründler's research areas are classical Arabic literature in its social environment, the role of Arabic literature as a crossroads of world literature, the application of literary theory to Middle Eastern literatures, Arabic language history, the history of Arabic books and Arabic palaeography .

She understands Arabic as a cosmopolitan language. The online magazine "campus.leben" at Freie Universität Berlin quotes her as follows:

“In the premodern era - from the seventh to the 19th century - Arabic was a learned language in which many wrote whose mother tongue was not Arabic: Persians , Jews , Byzantines , Berbers , Goths and others. Arabic thus united the voices of many people of different ethnic and religious origins. They all belonged to an Arab-Islamic cultural community. "

The reason for the award of the Leibniz Prize 2017 states:

“ Beatrice Gründler receives the Leibniz Prize for her studies on the polyphony of Arabic poetry and culture. At an early stage in her academic career she turned to the medium of writing in its fundamental importance for Arabic traditions, for example in her book "The Development of the Arabic Script" (1993). Finally, based on her research, she developed a complex media history of the Arab world, which ranges from the introduction of paper to book printing and beyond - Gründler himself speaks of an “Arabic book revolution” in this context. With her pilot project of a digital, critical and annotated edition of “ Kalila wa-Dimna ”, which has been carried out since 2015, Gründler opened up the history of the text, origins and effects of the collection of fables, which is considered one of the earliest Arabic prose writings and the central text of Arabic wisdom literature. The encounters between Arab and European knowledge traditions, which Gründler researches in her work, she practices in the way of her work in an exemplary manner - this is also why her research work is so important. "

Fonts

As an author

  • The Life and Times of Abū Tammām by Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-Ṣūlī preceded by al-Ṣūlī's Epistle to Abū l-Layth Muzāḥim ibn Fātik, edition and translation, Library of Arabic Literature. New York and London: New York Press, 2015. ISBN 978-0-8147-6040-6
  • Book Culture before Print: The Early History of Arabic Media . The American University of Beirut, The Margaret Weyerhaeuser Jewett Chair of Arabic. Occasional Papers, 2012.
  • Medieval Arabic Praise Poetry: Ibn al-Rūmī and the Patron's Redemption. London: Routledge Shorton 2003. Paperback, London: Routledge, 2010. ISBN 978-0-415-59579-7
  • The Development of the Arabic Scripts: From the Nabatean Era to the First Islamic Century . Harvard Semitic Studies 43, Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993. ISBN 1-55540-710-2

As editor

  • Classical Arabic Humanities in Their Own Terms: Festschrift for Wolfhart Heinrichs on his 65th Birthday Presented by His Students and Colleagues. Leiden: Brill, 2007.
  • (with Louise Marlow) Writers and Rulers: Perspectives from Abbasid to Safavid Times. Literatures in Context: Arabic - Persian - Turkish, Vol. 16. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2004.
  • (with Verena Klemm) Understanding Near Eastern Literatures: A Spectrum of Interdisciplinary Approaches. Literatures in Context: Arabic - Persian - Turkish , Vol. 1. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2000.

See also the complete list of publications under the following link.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ German National Academic Foundation: Annual Report 2017 , p. 69.
  2. ↑ Prof. Dr. Peter Strohschneider (DFG President): Leibniz laudation 2017 Beatrice Gründler. DFG, March 15, 2017, accessed October 7, 2018 .
  3. ^ Former AOS Presidents - American Oriental Society. Retrieved October 7, 2018 .
  4. ↑ The Poetics of Aristotle between Europe and Islam, Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies (English), accessed December 31, 2016 (English)
  5. ↑ ERC Advanced Grants 2016 ( English , PDF) European Research Council. April 3, 2017. Retrieved January 17, 2019.
  6. ↑ Beatrice Gründler: Kalila wa-Dimna - Wisdom Encoded. Free University of Berlin, accessed on October 4, 2018 (English).
  7. ↑ Fellow 2010/11 at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin , accessed December 31, 2016 (English)
  8. ↑ campus.leben, Freie Universität Berlin , accessed December 31, 2016 (German)
  9. ↑ Leibniz Prizes 2017 , accessed on December 31, 2016.
  10. ↑ Beatrice Gründler, Publications , accessed December 31, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Gründler, Beatrice
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Arabist
DATE OF BIRTH August 24, 1964
PLACE OF BIRTH Offenburg