Advanced Topics in Jewish Studies (390-0-1)

Topic

Sex and Nazi Germany

Instructors

Zavier Nunn
Zavier Nunn is a historian of modern Europe whose work focuses on medical and legal efforts to regulate sex—who may engage in it, who may change it, and how—alongside the lived experiences of those subject to social and state policing.

Meeting Info

Locy Hall 110: Tues, Thurs 3:30PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

Sex and Nazi Germany: two charged topics. What do they have to do with each other? More than you might think. The Nazis cared a great deal about sex. Decisions about who should have children, and who should be sterilized, sat at the center of racial policy. Brothels were set up for soldiers and for forced laborers in concentration camps. Paragraph 175 sent thousands of gay men to prison and then to the camps as well. At the same time, ordinary Germans were promised pleasure, a right extended to "Aryans" and withheld from Jews and other "undesirables." Sex had a purpose for the Third Reich: it fed the birth rate, enforced labor discipline, lifted military morale, and fueled racial war. Racism, Dagmar Herzog writes, has always also been about sex. Under National Socialism this was true in the extreme. Studying who could have sex—or change sex—and how in the Third Reich tells us as much about racial purity, biopolitics, national identity, and state policy, as sex itself. We will cover the sexual cultures of Weimar Berlin, Nazi reproductive and racial policy, the homoerotics of fascist masculinity, Nazi theories of sexuality, the persecution of gay men, lesbians, and transvestites, sexual violence in the camps, and the place of sex in the cultural memory of Nazi Germany. Students will encounter this history through court records, medical files, memoirs, photographs, film, and scholarship.

Learning Objectives

Students will develop a comprehensive understanding of how the Nazi state mobilized sex, gender, and sexuality to police inclusion and exclusion within German society. The course examines specific manifestations of sexual policing and incitement through law, medicine, culture, and media. By the end of the quarter, students will be able to identify how sexuality and gender operated within Nazi society—both among marginalized populations and those prioritized by the regime—and articulate informed interpretations of their historical significance. However, the learning objectives extend beyond knowledge acquisition. I am invested in cultivating broadly applicable skills: deep and close reading, critical thinking, primary-source analysis and information extraction, and the clear, sophisticated articulation of ideas and arguments in both oral and written form. These skills will be practiced in the classroom and further honed through assessment. My hope is that students will carry these skills forward as lifelong tools for navigating the complexities of the present and the future.

Teaching Method

Seminar
Readings
Class participation
Writing assignments
Discussion

Evaluation Method

Attendance and participation; leading discussion; in-class assessments; exam (final), paper

Class Attributes

Advanced Expression
Historical Studies Foundational Discipline
SoC Additional Distro