Dr. Kyle Frackman (he/him) is Associate Professor of German and Nordic Studies in the Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on queer studies, East German (GDR) culture, and German and Nordic film, literature, and music. He is the author of work on gender and sexuality in East German cinema, queer temporalities in contemporary German culture, and cultural life in divided Germany, and he is co-editor of the volumes Gender and Sexuality in East German Film: Intimacy and Alienation (Camden House, 2018) and Classical Music in the German Democratic Republic: Production and Reception (Camden House, 2015). His articles have appeared in journals including the Journal of Homosexuality, Seminar, Monatshefte, The Germanic Review, and Radical History Review. Dr. Frackman curated the exhibition  “A Queer Century, 1869–1969” at UBC and is a media commentator on German culture, queer history, and the legacy of the Berlin Wall. In 2023, Dr. Frackman was awarded the Killam Teaching Prize. In 2024, he received a Killam Accelerator Research Fellowship.

Before joining UBC in July 2012, he taught at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Smith College, and Amherst College. He holds a PhD and an MA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, along  with a Certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies, and a BA from Hamline University. His teaching spans  German language and literature, Scandinavian studies, media studies, and gender and sexuality studies.

Before joining the faculty at UBC in July 2012, Dr. Kyle Frackman (he/him) taught at institutions in the United States: the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Smith College, and Amherst College.

Dr. Frackman is Associate and Affiliated Faculty in the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, the Centre for European Studies, and the graduate program in Cinema and Media Studies.

Sample course descriptions

• queer studies
• media studies
• German-language and Nordic literature (especially 19th-/20th-century)
• East German culture and history
• German and Nordic film
• book history, print cultures
• German-North American immigration
• German, Swedish, Finnish

Projects

“Towards a Queer Media Theory: Print, Silkworms, Fluids, and Electricity,” supported by a Killam Accelerator Research Fellowship.

Homosexuality in East Germany, supported by a SSHRC Insight Grant: “Coming Out of the Iron Closet: Queer Lives in East Germany”

With Dr. Gregory Mackie (English) and UBC Rare Books and Special Collections, the Jane Rule Endowment-funded “Queer Collections Project,” which works to augment UBC’s holdings in queer literary and cultural history

Books and Edited Volumes

Competing Utopias: A Queer Media History of East Germany. McGill-Queen’s University Press. (forthcoming 2027)

Queer Time and Contemporary German Cinema. Co-ed. with Ervin Malakaj. Special issue of The Germanic Review 97.4 (2022). (R)

Queer Temporality and Possibilities in German Studies. Co-ed with Ervin Malakaj. Special issue of Monatshefte 114.3 (2022). (R)

Coming Out. German Film Classics. Camden House, 2022. (R)

• Reviewed in: Studies in European Cinema 21.2 (2022): 219–20; Feminist German Studies 41.1/2 (2025): 155–56.

Gender and Sexuality in East German Film: Intimacy and Alienation. Co-Ed. with Faye Stewart. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2018. (R)

• Reviewed in: German Studies Review 42.1 (2019): 193-95; Modern Language Review 114.2 (2019): 415-16; The German Quarterly 92.2 (2019): 297-300.

An Other Kind of Home: Gender-Sexual Abjection, Subjectivity, and the Uncanny in Literature and Film. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2015. 181 pp. (R)

• Reviewed in: Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 53.4 (2017): 409-411; Feminist German Studies 34 (2019): 161-63; Monatshefte 110.4 (2019): 690-92; The German Quarterly 92.3 (2019): 405–07.

Classical Music in the German Democratic Republic: Production and Reception. Co-Ed. with Larson Powell. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2015. (R)

• Reviewed in Journal of European Studies 46.2 (2016): 198-200; Women in German Newsletter 127 (Summer 2016): 23-24; Music and Letters 97.2 (2016): 364-66; American Record Guide 79.2 (2016): 237; Monatshefte 109.2 (2017): 332-34; German Studies Review 40.3 (2017): 688-90.

From Weimar to Christiania: German and Scandinavian Studies in Context. Co-Ed. with Florence Feiereisen. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007.

Books in Progress

Queer and Trans Approaches to German Studies. Co-Ed. with Ervin Malakaj. Under contract with De Gruyter.

Queer Possibility in the Late Nineteenth Century: The World Around Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. Co-Ed. with Douglas Pretsell. Under contract with University of Toronto Press.

Journal Articles

“Reading, Writing, Cutting, Pasting, Urning: The Queer Textual Practices of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs,” Culture as Text, vol. 3, no. 1 (2025), 163–78. (R)

“Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and the Queer Ecology of Sericulture.” The German Quarterly 97.2 (2024): 214–17. (R)

“Slow Aesthetics, Fraught Intimacy, and Queer Time in the German Queer New Wave: Sturmland and Neubau.” Monatshefte 114.3 (2022): 448–69. (R)

With Ervin Malakaj. “Introduction: Queer Time and Contemporary German Cinema.” The Germanic Review 97.4 (2022): 299–309. (R)

With Ervin Malakaj, “Introduction: Approaches to Queer Temporalities in German Studies.” Monatshefte 114.3 (2022): 353–62. (R)

“Homemade Pornography and the Proliferation of Queer Pleasure in East Germany.” Radical History Review 142 (2022): 93–109. (R)

“‘Du bist Nummer 55′: Girls’ Education, Mädchen in Uniform, and Social Responsibility.” Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 55.2 (2019): 110-27. (R)

“Persistent Ambivalence: Theorizing Queer East German Studies.” Journal of Homosexuality 66.5 (2019): 669–89. (R)

“The East German Film Coming Out (1989) as Melancholic Reflection and Hopeful Projection.” German Life and Letters 71.4 (2018): 452-72. (R) Reissued in Nov. 2019 special online issue of German Life and Letters.

“Based on a True Story: Tracking What’s Queer about German Queer Documentary.” Edinburgh German Yearbook 10 (2018): 83-108. (R)

“The Reality of the Body: Transgender, Transsexuality, and Truth in Romeos.” Colloquia Germanica 46.1 (2015): 64-87. (R)

“Coming Out of the Iron Closet: Contradiction in East German Gay History and Film.” Glossen 37 (2013). (R)

“The Curious Case of the Turkish Drag Queen: Film and Social Justice Education in Advanced German.” Neues Curriculum (August 2012). (R)

“Something Old, Something New: Canon Rejuvenation in German Studies.” Die Unterrichtspraxis / Teaching German 44.2 (2011): 124-32. doi: 10.1111/j.1756-1221.2011.00102.x (R)

Selected Book Chapters

“An Inconvenient Profession.” In Thinking with Lauren Berlant, edited by Hester Baer, Ervin Malakaj, Simone Pfleger, and Carrie Smith. University of Alberta Press, 2027.

“Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Print Culture, and the Spread of Queer Ideas.” In: Queer Print Cultures: Resistance, Subversion, and Community, edited by Vance Byrd and Javier Samper Vendrell. University of Toronto Press, 2025. 46–69.

“The Queer Cipher in East German Documentary Film: In Sachen H. und acht anderer and Queer Activist Super 8 Films.” In Documenting Socialism: East German Documentary Cinema, edited by Seán Allan and Sebastian Heiduschke. New York: Berghahn Books, 2024. 307–26.

“Shame and Love: East German Homosexuality Goes to the Movies.” In Gender and Sexuality in East German Film: Intimacy and Alienation, edited by Kyle Frackman and Faye Stewart. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2018. 225-248. (R)

— and Faye Stewart. “Introduction: Sex and Socialism in East German Cinema.” In Gender and Sexuality in East German Film: Intimacy and Alienation, edited by Kyle Frackman and Faye Stewart. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2018. 1-21. (R)

— and Larson Powell. “Music and Heritage in the German Democratic Republic.” In Classical Music in the German Democratic Republic: Production and Reception, edited by Kyle Frackman and Larson Powell. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2015. 1-19. (R)

“Vor Ort: The Functions and Early Roots of German Regional Crime Fiction.” Tatort Germany: The Strange Case of German Crime Fiction, edited by Todd Herzog and Lynn Marie Kutch. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2014. 23-40. (R)

Encyclopedia Entries

Entries on “Einojuhani Rautavaara,” “Folk High Schools,” “Nobel Peace Prize,” and “Swedish-speakers in Finland.” Knowledge on the Nordics. 2018.

Entries on “Lola und Bilidikid” and “Zurück auf los” in The Directory of World Cinema: Germany. Ed. Michelle Langford. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2012. 192-93, 196-97.

“Finland, Civil War, and Revolution, 1914-1918.” International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest: 1500 to the Present. Ed. Immanuel Ness. NY: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. 1200-02. (R)

Entries on “German Literature,” “Magnus Hirschfeld,” and “Richard von Krafft-Ebing” in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Love, Courtship, and Sexuality through History: The Nineteenth Century. Vol. 5. Ed. Susan Mumm. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008. 138-42, 111-13, 130-32.

Non-Refereed Publications

“Coming Out is a First and a Last.” Proofed. 28 Mar. 2022. https://boydellandbrewer.com/blog/film-and-theatre/coming-out-is-a-first-and-a-last/

“Humanities are essential in understanding the Russian war against Ukraine.” The Conversation. 23 Mar. 2022. https://theconversation.com/humanities-are-essential-in-understanding-the-russian-war-against-ukraine-178760
Republished: University Affairs https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/humanities-are-essential-in-understanding-the-russian-war-against-ukraine/;
Trek Magazine https://trekmagazine.alumni.ubc.ca/2022/humanities/humanities-are-essential-understanding-russian-war-against-ukraine.

“Coming Out, the East German film that premiered when the Berlin Wall fell, is still relevant today.” The Conversation. 16 Nov. 2021.

“Coming Out in East Germany.” Coming Out. Critical essay on special edition DVD. Directed by Heiner Carow. Amherst, MA: DEFA Film Library, 2021.

—, and Skyler Arndt-Briggs. Teaching Guide: Coming Out: A Film by Heiner Carow. DEFA Film Library, 2021.

“Why do GDR Studies Matter Now?” DDGC Blog. 27 May 2019.

“Amplification as Feminist Practice.” Digital Feminist Collective: Feminist Scholar-Activism. January 2018.

“Nordic Non-Fiction Summer Reading Guide.” Viking Magazine June 2015: 21. Print.

“A Genius of Our Own: The GDR and DEFA’s Beethovens.” A Beethoven Duet. DVD released by the DEFA Film Library. 2014. 12 pp.

Selected Reviews

Rev. of Jeffrey Schneider, Uniform Fantasies: Soldiers, Sex, and Queer Emancipation in Imperial Germany. University of Toronto Press, 2023. In: University of Toronto Quarterly 94.3: 407–08.

Rev. of Newsome, W. Jake. Pink Triangle Legacies: Coming Out in the Shadow of the Holocaust. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022. In American Historical Review 129.4 (2024): 1801–02.

Rev. of Rottmann, Andrea. Queer Lives Across the Wall: Desire and Danger in Divided Berlin, 1945–1970. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023. In Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 60.3 (2024): 267–69.

Smith, Tom. Comrades in Arms: Military Masculinities in East German Culture. New York: Berghahn Books, 2020. In German Studies Review 44.2 (2021): 425–26.

Allan, Seán. Screening Art: Modernist Aesthetics and the Socialist Imaginary in East German Cinema. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2019. In Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 56.1 (2020): 80–82.

Lion Feuchtwanger, The Devil in Boston: A Play about the Salem Witchcraft Trials in Three Acts. Ed. Waltraud Maierhofer. Trans. J. Barrows Mussey. [1948] North Liberty: Amazon Digital Services, 2015. In Women in German Newsletter 128 (2017): 23–25.

Jampol, Justinian, ed. Beyond the Wall: Art and Artifacts from the GDR. NY: Taschen, 2014. In Seminar: Journal of Germanic Studies 53.3 (2017): 305-307.

“To be gay in 1950s Zurich.” kultur360. 27 May 2016. Original available at http://www.kultur360.com/to-be-gay-in-1950s-zurich/.

Mueller, Gabriele, and James M. Skidmore, eds. Cinema and Social Change in Germany and Austria. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012. In German Studies Review 37.1 (2014): 243-46.

Blawid, Martin. Von Kraftmenschen und Schwächlingen: Literarische Männlichkeitsentwürfe bei Lessing, Goethe, Schiller und Mozart. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011. In Monatshefte 104.3 (2012): 428-30.

Krimmer, Elisabeth, and Patricia Anne Simpson, eds. Enlightened War: German Theories and Cultures of Warfare from Frederick the Great to Clausewitz. Rochester: Camden House, 2011. In Women in German Newsletter 120 (2012). Web.

Schulte, Hans and Gerard Chapple, eds. Shadows of the Past: Austrian Literature of the Twentieth Century. NY: Peter Lang, 2009. In German Quarterly 83.4 (2010).

Beiser, Frederick C., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth-Century Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. In German Studies Review 33.2 (2010).

Freydberg, Bernard. Schelling’s Dialogical Freedom Essay: Provocative Philosophy Then and Now. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008. In German Studies Review 33.2 (2010).

2023, Killam Teaching Prize

Ph.D. Supervision

Braden Russell, German Studies. “Constellations of Ambivalent Belonging: Kinship and Enoughness in Queer Jewish Cultural Production in Germany”

Steve Commichau, German Studies, 2025. “The Monster is the Message: The Ghost as Monster and Medium in Early Modern German Protestant Records”

M.A. Supervision

Brian Finn, German Studies.

Susanna Cassisa, German Studies, 2024. “Groomer Rumor: The Trope of the Queer Child Predator in German and American Popular Media (1869–2024)”

Anna Westpfahl, German Studies, 2019. “Of Matter and Meaning: Quantum Entanglement and Biological Fantasy in Psychoanalysis”

“From TikTok spells to Hollywood, witches are in again.” Your Morning Vancouver, CTV. 30 Oct. 2026.

“UBC professor talks resurgence of witchcraft and sorcery in pop culture.” Daybreak, CBC Radio. 27 Oct. 2026.

“Coming Out: Die Geschichte des ersten und letzten queeren Kinofilms der DDR.” [Coming Out: The history of the first and last queer film of the GDR] Hörspiel und Feature. Deutschlandfunk (German national public radio). 20 February 2026.

“UBC Nordic Studies Lærerlivet Series: An Interview with Dr. Kyle Frackman.”

“Cataloguer un livre LGBTQ, un acte politique.” Radio-Canada, 14 Mar. 2022.

Radio West, CBC Radio, 13 Nov. 2019.

“A Queer Century, 1869–1969.” Stacks & Facts YouTube series. 11 & 25 Aug. 2019. Guided tour and interview. Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRBSDG0FXtM. Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeyZl0O1H28.

“Seven things to do in Vancouver, Aug. 9 to 15: A Queer Century, 1869 to 1969, more.” Vancouver Sun. 6 Aug. 2019.

Democracy Watch, CiTR radio. 1 Aug. 2019.

CityTV Breakfast Television. 30 July 2019.

CBC News. “UBC Library exhibit shows queer history through curated display.” 29 July 2019.

UBC News. “Secret love letters and languages: UBC exhibit offers Pride Week history lesson.” 29 July 2019.

“A Queer Century, 1869–1969.” North by Northwest, CBC Radio, 22 June 2019.

Germany@Canada 2017, Goethe-Institut. “British Columbia Through Arriving Eyes.” 9 May 2017.

Arts on Air, CITR. Nov. 26, 2015.

KPRI Radio. Nov. 7, 2014. Discussion of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

UBC News. “Casting a Long Shadow.” Oct. 27, 2014.

Press kit accolade/review for film release of Out in East Berlin – Lesbians and Gays in the GDR. Nancy Fishman Film Releasing.

“Faculty Spotlight: Professor Kyle Frackman.” The Scribe (College of Humanities & Fine Arts Advising Center Newsletter). Dec. 8, 2011. (PDF)

“Class explores witches’ history.” Springfield Republican Oct. 31, 2011. (PDF)

“Nightmarish Fantasy and Gruesome History: ‘Witches’ Class Examines Folklore and Fact.” In the Classroom, Amherst College. Oct. 28, 2011.

“UMass Amherst: Frackman and Arndt-Briggs take part in German exchange.” University of Massachusetts International Relations. July 28, 2010.

“UMass takes part in a German language immersion program.” Daily Collegian. Oct. 5, 2009.