Approaches to History (393-0-22)

Topic

Queer and Trans Histories of the Holocaust

Instructors

Zavier Nunn

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 4-410: Tues, Thurs 3:30PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

The Holocaust is one of the most studied horrors of the modern past. Yet research on queer and trans Holocaust histories is relatively new. This upper-level seminar covers key analytics that the Holocaust has generated within the historical discipline but from the perspective of recent scholarship. Queer and trans histories are not reducible to the study of people who identified (or whom we might identify) under analogous terms in the past. Rather, queer and trans studies illuminate not only how societal systems unevenly bear down on certain individuals, but also how these systems organize and shape whole societies which structure the lives of everyone under their remit. For example, studying who could have sex—or change sex—and how in the Third Reich tells us as much about racial purity, biopolitics, collective identity, and state policy, as sex itself. We will therefore be attending to the varying and uneven experiences of queer and trans people under Nazism while also engaging new methods and conclusions about individual and state violence, social hygiene practices, identity formation, and memory culture. Queer and trans scholarship asks us to think about the individual and social body as sites of contention and control—areas that are key to understanding how Nazism and the Holocaust worked.

Learning Objectives

Students will gain empirical knowledge about how sex, gender, and sexuality operated in the Third Reich and the Holocaust. They will also sharpen their reading, discussion and writing skills, and practice primary source analysis.

Evaluation Method

Class engagement & readings: 30%. Lead discussion on primary sources: 10%. In class short essay: 15% In class primary source analysis: 15%. Proposal and Bibliography: 5%. Final paper: 25%.

Class Notes

History Major Concentration(s): European
History Minor Concentration(s): Law and Crime

Class Attributes

Advanced Expression
Historical Studies Foundational Discipline
Historical Studies Distro Area