Prof. Dr. Christian Schwermann from the Faculty of East Asian Studies, Department of Chinese Language and Literature
East Asian Studies
I Connect Premodern Cultures from All Over the World
The way people have told stories to one another reveals a great deal about their cultures, as Christian Schwermann knows.
I connect premodern cultures in ancient Egypt, Europe, the Himalayas, Latin America, the Middle East, and East Asia. In the Transregio/Collaborative Research Center 427 “Historical and Transcultural Narratology”, I collaborate with colleagues from Bochum, Bonn, and Freiburg to investigate how people have told stories to one another. Across eras and cultures, narratives have fostered social cohesion. We examine narratives from various cultural contexts to identify and better understand the dynamics and functions of written and oral storytelling. The goal is to develop a new historical-transcultural narratology that overcomes the methodological limitations of existing narrative theory as well as its exclusive focus on Western and modern or postmodern traditions. Since October 2, 2026, our Transregio-CRC has been building a bridge between three German universities of excellence!
Excellence Strategy
