Join us on March 11th at 11am PST for an online Ziegler Lecture featuring Zavier Nunn (Duke University).
Title: “Trans liminality and the Holocaust”
Abstract: Holocaust studies have recently seen a much needed ‘queer’ turn, but trans’ specific position within the literature remains nascent and fraught. Indeed, there is a heated and pressing discourse surrounding the question of ‘whether trans people were victims of Nazism’ which has stakes within contemporary politics. This lecture provides insights into the nature of this contemporary discourse and offers a historical argument for trans women’s liminal position with the Nazi social order, which cannot be reduced to an analysis of discrete identity categories. A focus on trans subjects makes visible larger structures and trends that are not reducible to those trans subjects. In doing so, I narrate the normative logics of sex, gender, and race as they are addressed to, and unevenly administered upon, the social totality under Nazism.
Bio: Zavier Nunn is the postdoctoral associate on the theme ‘Histories of the Transgender Present’ in the Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies Department at Duke University. His PhD, from the University of Oxford, is an everyday history of trans feminine life in Weimar and Nazi Germany, which de-idealizing the European medico-legal codification of trans identity and demonstrates the liminal positionality of transness within the Nazi social order. Across his research he uses micro historical methods to unpick how macro (state) systems and institutions are stitched together. His work is published in Past & Present and forthcoming in Gender & History and German History.
How to Attend:
Please register here to attend this virtual lecture via Zoom, which will be held online on March 11, 2024 at 11:00am PST.
