The Goldsmiths Centre for Queer History and the Goldsmiths History Society are delighted to welcome back to Goldsmiths our colleague Benno Gammerl to deliver the 4th Goldsmiths Queer History Annual Lecture.

This year's annual lecture also gives us the opportunity to celebrate the publication of Dr Gammerl's book Anders Fühlen: Schwules und lesbisches Leben in der Bundesrepublik. Eine Emotionsgeschichte and his appointment as chair for the history of gender and sexuality at the European University Institute in Florence.

A link to this online talk with be sent ahead of the event.

Good times – and also very bad ones:

Queer history in modern Germany

How can one write the queer history of twentieth-century Germany with its pioneering advances and its catastrophic backlashes? The talk traces the intricate temporalities linking queer pasts in Imperial, Weimar, Nazi, East, West and re-united Germany. This will also help us to better understand the at times conflictual simultaneity of stigmatizing, emancipatory and normalizing dynamics. What do these insights imply for contemporary activism?

Benno Gammerl

Dr Benno Gammerl holds the chair for the history of gender and sexuality at the European University Institute in Florence. Before he taught Queer History as a DAAD Lecturer in Queer History at Goldsmiths, University of London. Gammerl’s fields of expertise include the history of homosexualities in modern Germany, the history of empires and the history of emotions. His current research explores the interplay between migratory dynamics and attitudes towards sexual diversity in twentieth-century Europe. His most recent book on the emotional lives of gays and lesbians in West Germany comes out with Carl Hanser in 2021.