Jonah I. Garde
Group
Department Program
Education
Ph.D., University of Bern, 2023
Graduate Diploma, University of Vienna, 2014
About
Dr. Jonah I. Garde is a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow (2024-26) at CENES specializing in 19th and 20th century trans histories in the German speaking world, their modern/colonial entanglements, as well as the archives and affects they produce. They are also a Postdoctoral Affiliate at the Centre for European Studies at UBC.
Dr. Garde’s book Trans* Geschichten der Moderne: »Geschlechtsumwandlung« im 20. Jahrhundert und ihre kolonialen Geister explores how trans* histories are entangled with modernity and colonialism in early-20th-century Austria. The book offers an in-depth analysis of how ‘sex change,’ both as an idea and a medical practice, was reshaped in the early 20th century by modern medicine and biology, mass popular culture, as well as colonial discourses. The book’s geographic focus not only highlights Austria’s distinct historical context but also underscores its centrality in global discussions on the coloniality and modernity of sex and its mutability. In doing so, the book raises important questions about how our perspective on trans* historiography—its content and subjects—changes when colonial histories and their haunting legacies are placed at the center of that endeavour.
Before joining UBC, Dr. Garde was a postdoctoral researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Bern where they taught Gender Studies and Trans History. Previously, they have taught at the University of Vienna, the University of Innsbruck, and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
Together with Ervin Malkaj they are the co-convener of the DDGC Queer and Trans German Studies Research Cooperative.
Since 2025, Dr. Garde is a co-editor for the Transnational Queer Histories book series at DeGruyter.
Research
As a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Garde will investigate how collective memory about the transgender past is generated in contemporary cultural productions like films, TV shows, texts, and museum exhibitions. The project “Germany and the Trans Historical Imaginary: Affective Reimaginations of the Transgender Past” explores how German history and German archives inform the (re)writings of the transgender past in these cultural productions and elaborates on their powerful role in constructing present trans identities, communities, and politics.
Research interests:
- Trans Studies
- Trans histories of the 19th and 20th century
- Trans lives under fascism then and now
- European modernity/coloniality
- Intersectionality
- Film and Visual Cultures
- Archives, Affects, and Cultural Memory
Publications
Monographs
Trans* Geschichten der Moderne: „Geschlechtsumwandlung“ und ihre kolonialen Geister. (= Trans* Histories of Modernity: “Sex Change” and its Colonial Ghosts) Bielefeld: transcript, 2025.
Cripping Development? Ambivalenzen “Inklusiver Entwicklung” aus crip-theoretischer Perspektive. Vienna: Peter Lang, 2015.
Journal Articles
Garde, Jonah I., and Yv Nay. “Menschenrechte, ‚biologische Fakten‘ und binäre Geschlechter: Koloniale Geschichten der transantagonistischen Gegenwart.” Femina Politica – Zeitschrift für feministische Politikwissenschaft 32, no. 2 (2023): 38–50. https://doi.org/10.3224/feminapolitica.v32i2.04.
Garde, Jonah I. “Provincializing Trans* Modernity: Asterisked Histories and Multiple Horizons in Der Steinachfilm.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 8, no. 2 (2021): 207–22. https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-8890551.
Garde, Jonah I. “Inclusive Development as Crip(Dys)Topic Promise: Querying Development, Dis/Ability and Human Rights.” Somatechnics 6, no. 2 (2016): 159–78. https://doi.org/10.3366/soma.2016.0189.
Book Chapters
Garde, Jonah I. “Imposter Formations: On Bogus Pasts, Unreliable Narrators, and Trans History’s Phony Archives.” In Queer and Trans Approaches to German Studies, edited by Kyle Frackman and Ervin Malakaj. DeGruyter, forthcoming.
Wolff, Christopher, and Jonah I. Garde. “Archives and Trans Cinema.” In The Handbook of Global Trans Cinema, edited by Douglas Vakoch. Forthcoming.
“Between the Bar and the Clinic: Trans* Visual Histories in Mysterium des Geschlechtes.“ In Weimar’s Queer Visions, edited by Katie Sutton, Ina Linge, and Birgit Lang. University of Toronto Press, forthcoming.
Garde, Jonah I, and Simon Noa Harder. “Ansätze für trans*formative Pädagogiken.” In Bildung.Macht.Diversität: Critical Diversity Literacy im Hochschulraum, edited by Serena O. Dankwa, Sarah-Mee Filep, Ulla Klingovsky, and Georges Pfruender. Transcript, 2021.
Other Publications
trans. inter*. nicht-binär. Lehr- und Lernräume an Hochschulen geschlechterreflektiert gestalten, with Elis Eder, Anna Lena Janowiak, Ruth Orli Moshkovitz, Noah Rieser and Marion Thuswald. Academy of Fine Arts, 2019.
“Making Connections. Interview mit Margo Okazawa-Rey,” with Anukriti Dixit and Jovita dos Santos. genderstudies – Zeitschrift des IZFG 36 (2020), 19-21.
“Temporalities of Becoming. Trans(chrono)normativity and Imagined Hormone Time,” Crip Magazine 3 (2020), 40-43.
Awards
2024 Barbara Lischetti Award
2024- 2026 Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship
2022 University of Bern, Doc.Mobility Scholarship
2018 – 2021 Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, PhD Scholarship,
2018 Chair in Transgender Studies, University of Victoria, Visiting Fellowship
2014 Peter Lang, Honorary Award for Humanities
2014 Österreichische Forschungsgemeinschaft (ÖFG), International Communication
2013 University of Vienna, Merit-based scholarship
2013 Austrian Student Union, Grant for feminist/queer emerging scholars
Graduate Supervision
Celine Dosch (M.A. Thesis, 2025): Queere Erinnerungskultur und Multidirektionalität. Zur Verfolgung lesbischer und transmaskuliner Personen im Nationalsozialismus. (Goethe University Frankfurt, Second Supervisor)