Conferences & Presentations

Conference Presentations and Roundtables

12/2021            Roundtable on “Curating Visual Archives of Sex,” Exhibitionism: Sexuality at the Museum. An online conference organized by the Kinsey Institute (Indiana University) and the Wilzig Erotic Art Museum in Miami, Florida.

10/2021            Roundtable on “The Future of Queer German Studies,” German Studies Association Annual Conference, Zoom.

10/2019            “Himmler’s Mystical Racism and Misreadings of Lebensborn,” German Studies Association Annual Conference, Portland, OR.

4/2019              “The Queerness of History and its Interdisciplinary Challenges,” Thinking and Working in, through, and with the German (Studies) Context, University of Alberta. Convenors: Simone Pfleger and Carrie Smith.

10/2018            “The Costs of Silencing Holocaust Victims: Why We Must Add Sexual Violence to our Definition of Genocide,” Genocide in Twentieth-Century History: The Power and the Problems of an Interpretive, Ethical-Political, and Legal Concept. Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. Conveners: Holodomor Research and Education Consortium, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta and Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Alon Confino, Andrea Graziosi, and Frank Sysyn, October 19-20, 2018.

9/2018              “Creating Trouble between the German Military and the SS”: British Black Propaganda in WWII," German Studies Association Annual Conference, Pittsburgh, PA.

6/2018              “Spectres of Nazi Sexual Deviance in Allied Propaganda: Himmler’s Threat to the Normality of Democracy,” Thinking Critically with the Normal, Volterra, Italy. Organizers Peter Cryle and Elizabeth Stephens (University of Queensland).

4/2018              “Forced Motherhood and Other Instrumentalisations of Female ‘Promiscuity’: Myths, Metaphors, and Comparison.” European Social Science History Conference, Belfast.

11/2017            “Decency, Democracy, and Sex: Lessons from the Nazi Past.” The Future of German Studies Across the Globe, Cambridge DAAD Research Hub for German Studies, Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.

10/2017            “Redefining Sexual Decency in the Third Reich: Lebensborn Mothers as the Avant-garde of a New Sexual Order.” German Studies Association Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA.

9/2017              “Enabling Diversity in Museums: A Roundtable Discussion.” Western Museums Association Annual Conference, Edmonton, AB. Other participants: Michele Hardy, Dick Averns, Martina Dawley, Shabnam Inanloo Dailoo, and Erin Salthouse.

6/2017              “Roundtable Discussion on Teaching the History of Gender and Sexuality.” The Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders, and Sexualities. Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY. Other participants: Joshua A. Sanborn, Estelle B. Freedman, Katherine B. Crawford, and Susan K. Kent.

10/2016            “Reflections on the Future of German Studies in North America.” The Future of German Studies in British, Russian and Other International Contexts: Joint Workshop of the Cambridge DAAD Research Hub for German Studies and The German Historical Institute, Moscow, Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.

5/2016              “The Longue Durée of Sexual Citizenship in Modern Germany.” Annual Meeting of the Canadian Historical Association, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Calgary.

4/2016              “Is Sex Medical, Political or Personal?: The German Approach to Sexual Diversity and its Legacies from Hirschfeld to Kinsey.” Navigating Diversity: Narratives, Practices and Politics in German-Speaking Europe, Université du Québec à Montréal and Université de Montréal.

3/2016              “’I am so grateful to all you men of medicine’: Transsexual Knowledge Networks from Benjamin to Kinsey.” Moving Trans History Forward 2016. University of Victoria.

1/2016              “Getting Published in the Journal of the History of Sexuality.” Publishing in Queer History: A Roundtable with Editors, American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta. Invited by the Committee on LGBT History.

10/2015            “’The Most Beautiful Face of Socialism’: Katarina Witt and the Sexual Politics of Sport in the Cold War.” The Global History of Sport in the Cold War. New York University.

10/2015            “Sexual Citizenship in the Federal Republic of Germany.” German Studies Association Annual Conference. Washington, DC.

9/2014              “Ka-Tzetnik’s House of Dolls and Holocaust Pornography.” German Studies Association Annual Conference. Kansas City, MO.

6/2013              with Joshua Sanborn, “Endangering the Master Narrative: Taking Sex and Gender Seriously,” Pour une histoire genre de l-Europe, LabEx, “Écrire une Histoire Novelle de l’Europe,” Axe Genre, Université Paris-Sorbonne and German Historical Institute, Paris.

5/2013              “Volksgesundheit without the Volkskörper? Reframing Biopolitics after the Third Reich,” Translating Health: Cultures of Prevention and (Bio)Medicine in Europe after 1945, Universitätsmedizin Mainz.

4/2013              “Queering Friendship: What Hirschfeld Could Teach Hegel & Arendt,” Rethinking Amity, University of Chicago. In celebration of Michael Geyer.

3/2013              “Testimony in Holocaust Historiography.” Ka-Tzetnik: The Impact of the First Holocaust Novelist in Israel and Beyond, University of Calgary. (See “Conferences” below.)

10/2012            “The Longue Durée of Demographobia: Ideology, Economics, and Birth Rates from Grotjahn to Sarrazin.” German Studies Association Annual Conference. Milwaukee, WI.

6/2012              “A Century of German Population Panics: Ideology, Economics, and Birth Rates from Grotjahn to Sarrazin,” Rethinking the Demographic Moment, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Universität Freiburg.

4/2012              “Beyond Sexual Binaries? Magnus Hirschfeld and the Missed Turning Point of Sexual Citizenship.” European Social Science History Conference, Glasgow, Scotland.

10/2011            “Lebensborn and the Pornographic/Erotic Displacement of the Holocaust,” Holocaust’-Fiktion. Kunst jenseits der Authentizität [Holocaust Fiction: Art Beyond Authenticity], Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany.

6/2011              “Health as a Public Good: The Positive Legacies of Volksgesundheit.” The Good Germans?” New Transatlantic Perspectives. Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Alumni Conference of the Berlin Program, Freie Universität Berlin.

4/2011              with Michael Thomas Taylor, “Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft as Exhibition, Stage, and Archive.” The Past On Display: Museums, Film Musealization Conference, York University, Toronto.

10/2010            “Lebensborn and the Love Story of Democracy in East and West Germany.” German Studies Association Annual Conference, Oakland, California.

11/2010            “The Lies Their Mothers Told Them: Lebensborn Children Uncover a Nazi Past.” Social Science History Association Annual Conference, Chicago.

11/2009            “Mythos Lebensborn: Die Sexualisierung der NS-Vergangenheit,” Seventh Annual Meeting of Lebensspuren e.V. (association of former Lebensborn children), Wernigerode, Germany.

10/2009            “Gender, Sexuality and Race: Moving Beyond the Historikerinnenstreit,” Beyond the Racial State: Rethinking Nazi Germany, University of Indiana at Bloomington.

5/2009              “A Moral History of Lebensborn?” Annual Meeting of the Canadian Historical Association, Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Ottawa.

5/2009              “‘Ich bin gestresst!’: Stress and the Psychologization of Cold-War German Society,” Happy Birthday 'BRD': Transatlantic Reflections on Six Decades Full of Wonder, Université de Montréal.

10/2008            “A Moral History of Lebensborn?” German Studies Association Annual Conference, St. Paul, Minnesota.

2/2008              “Rumour and Morality: The Power of the Lebensborn Myth.” European Social Science History Conference, Lisbon, Portugal.

2/2008              “‘Multi-Kulti’ Tolerance and the Clash of Cultures in German Family Court,” Testing Tolerance: Acceptance – [In]Tolerance – Exclusion, University of Calgary.

11/2007            “Private Vice and Public Order: ‘Lebensborn’ and Its Legacy in Postwar West Germany,” Democracy and Intimacy: Toward a Moral History of Postwar Europe, Centre canadien d'études allemandes et européennes, Université de Montréal.

10/2007            “Beyond the Fatherland and More than Kinder, Küche, Kirche: Gender in the German History Survey.” German Studies Association Annual Conference, San Diego, California.

9/2006              “Think it over?”: Soldiers, Veronikas, and Venereal Disease in Occupied Berlin.” Berlin’s Culturescape in the 20th Century, University of Regina.

3/2006              “Lebensborn: The Sexualization of the Nazi Past in Popular Culture.” European Social Science History Conference, Amsterdam.

5/2005              “Utopian Biopolitics: Reproductive Policies, Gender Roles, and Sexuality in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union,” Stalinism-Nazism Conference, University of Chicago.

9/2004              “Bevölkerungspolitik, Lebensraum, and Nazi Masculinity,” Volk, Space, Violence, Gender: Gendered Perspectives on the German Occupation of Eastern Europe, Hamburg Institute for Social Research, Hamburg Germany.

9/2003              “Victims, Whores, or Fallen Girls? Allied and German Attitudes Towards Female VD Cases in Occupied Germany.” German Studies Association Annual Conference, New Orleans.

/5/2003             “The Politics of Reproduction in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union,“ Stalinism-Nazism Conference, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University.

2/2002              “The Politics of Fertility Through Five German Regimes,” Local History as Total History Conference, University of Toronto.

10/2002            “The Politics of Fertility or the Politics of the Body? Methodological Speculations on the History of Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Germany.” Sexuality in Modern German History, : German Historical Institute, Washington D. C.

10/2001            “Where have all the babies gone?: The Sexual Revolution and the Critique of Population Policy in West Germany.” German Studies Association Annual Conference, Washington D. C..

10/2000            “Venereal Disease, Sexuality, and the Propaganda against Promiscuity in Two German Dictatorships.” German Studies Association Annual Conference, Houston.

5/2000              “Sex, Disease, and Violence: Shifting Authority over Reproductive and Sexual Choice in Germany, 1939-1949,” Politikgeschichte – Alltagsgeschichte – Lebensgeschichte: Figurationen 1938-1969. NS Deutschland, DDR, BRD und Österreich im Vergleich,”  Universität Erfurt, Germany.

10/1999            “'Dank seiner Manneszucht': The Military, Venereal Disease and the Post-WWI Sexuality Crisis.” The Military, War and the Gender Order in the Twentieth Century, Arbeitskreises Militärgeschichte e.V. (Universität Freiburg) and the Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung an der Technischen Universität Berlin, Germany.

10/1999            “Gender, Sexuality, and Venereal Disease Control in East Berlin, 1945-1970.” German Studies Association Annual Confernce, Salt Lake City.

9/1997              “Uncontrollable Urges and Diseased Bodies: Prophylactics and the Politics of Fertility in Weimar Germany.” German Studies Association Annual Conference, Washington, D. C..

10/1997            “Guarding the Health of Worker Families in the GDR: Socialist Health Care, Bevölkerungspolitik, and Marriage Counselling, 1945-1972,” Arbeiter in der SBZ/DDR 1945-1970, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany.

4/1997              “The Legacy of Bevölkerungspolitik: Venereal Disease Control and Marriage Counselling in East and West Berlin, 1945-1972,” Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar in German History, Georgetown University and the German Historical Institute, Washington, D. C..

5/1993              “Social Hygiene and Social Pathology: Medical Teaching at the University of Berlin, 1871-1914,” Midwest Graduate Seminar in German Studies.

5/1992              "War, Women and the Volk: Gertrud Bäumer and the Political Corporatism of Friedrich Naumann."  Midwest Graduate Seminar in German Studies.

Conference Panel and Workshop Commentator

12/2017            Commentator at conference “Sexuality, Holocaust, Stigma: Taking Stock,” Berlin. Organizers Anna Hájková (University of Warwick) and Birgit Bosold (Schwules Museum*).

10/2016            “Reframing Post-War German Identity: Consumerism, Youth Culture and Urban Space,” German Studies Association Annual Conference, San Diego, Calif.. Presenters: Body Mrozek and Natalie Scholz.

10/2015            “Being German, Being Female, 1930-1950,” German Studies Association Annual Conference, Washington, D.C.. Presenters: Erika Quinn, Cindy Walter-Gensler, and Katrin Paehler.

12/2013            “Alternative Emotions in Youth and Popular Cultures,” Feeling Differently. Emotional Non-Conformism in the 20th Century, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Center for the History of Emotions. Organizers: Joachim C. Häberlen and Jan Hutta. Berlin Germany. Presenters: Henning Wellmann, Christoph Bareither, and Maja Figge.

2/2013              “Everyday Effort: Promoting Positive Population Policies within Nazi Organizations.” American Historical Association Annual Meeting (sponsored by Central European History Society), New Orleans. Presenters: Amy Beth Carney, Melissa Kravetz, and Bradley Nicols.

12/2011            Commentary on book manuscript (Excluded for Life: Forced Sterilization in Twentieth-Century North America, by Randall Hansen and Desmond King) at workshop Eugenics, Population, Welfare, and Reproductive Policies in Europe and North America, Munk Centre, University of Toronto.

9/2011              “Gender, Eugenics, and Women’s Rights in German History: New Perspectives.” German Studies Association Annual Conference, Louisville, Kentucky. Presenters: Kirsten Leng, Lora Knight, Melissa Kravetz, Ann Taylor Allen.

10/2004            “Post-Fascist Health Regimes.“ German Studies Association Annual Conference, Washington, D.C. Presenters: Donna Harsch, Young-Sun Hong, and Scott Moranda.