Exhibitions and Special Events

Interviewer: Maria Alexopoulou
Interviewee: Fatima El-Tayeb

What is German history today, and where might it be going? The borders of German history as a field have become more porous and inclusive, looking at the global entanglement of the German lands from medieval to modern times. Colonial history has taken centre stage. Victim groups of Germany’s various violent pasts have long asked for recognition; these previously neglected histories are now increasingly being studied and heard. Queer and gender historians are not simply filling gaps but questioning the categories and methods of German history, as well as challenging the erasures of minoritized communities. The war in Ukraine raises new questions about Germany’s involvement in Europe’s east and its political consequences today, revealing blind spots in public knowledge about the Holocaust. Long-established ruptures have proven to be continuities on the pre- and post-1945 timeline as historians pay more attention to the history of race, racism, and antisemitism. As a result of these new histories, German memory culture is also undergoing a radical shift as an increasingly diverse society demands new forms of commemoration. We will take some of these topics as a starting point, yet we do not want to assume universality. Each of our interviewees will select and interview another expert—a model that will be continued in this new Instagram Live series. The outcome of this long-term debate is open, as historians and other people entering the conversation will reflect not simply on the past, but where the debate might go in the future.

Fatima El-Tayeb is Professor of Ethnicity, Race & Migration and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University. She was previously a member of the departments of Literature and Ethnic Studies and director of Critical Gender Studies at the University of California, San Diego. She received an MA in American Studies and Modern European History and a PhD in History from the University of Hamburg, Germany. Her research interests include Black Europe, comparative diaspora studies, queer of color critique, critical Muslim studies, decolonial theory, transnational feminisms, visual culture studies, race and technology, and critical European studies. Her publications deconstruct structural racism in “colorblind” Europe and center strategies of resistance among racialized communities, especially those that politicize culture through an intersectional, queer practice.

She is the author of three books - Schwarze Deutsche. ‘Rasse’ und nationale Identität 1890 – 1933 (2001), European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe (2011) and Undeutsch. Die Konstruktion des Anderen in der postmigrantischen Gesellschaft (2016) - and numerous articles on the interactions of race, gender, sexuality, religion and nation.

Dr Maria Alexopoulou is a principal investigator at the Research Institute for Social Cohesionat the Center for Research on Antisemitism, at the Technische Universität Berlin and an unaffiliated lecturer at the Chair for Contemporary History at the University of Mannheim. She studied history and philosophy at Heidelberg University and holds a PhD in modern history from the Free Universität Berlin. Her main fields of research are the history of migration, the history of racism, and contemporary German and US history. Her habilitation ‘Rassistisches Wissen in der Transformation der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in eine Einwanderungsgesellschaft 1940–1990’ [Racist Knowledge in the Transformation of the Federal Republic of Germany into an Immigration Society 1940–1990] will be published in autumn 2024 by Wallstein Verlag.

Select publications:
Deutschland und die Migration: Geschichte einer Einwanderungsgesellschaft wider Willen (Ditzingen, 2020).
‘Ignoring Racism in the History of the German Immigration Society: Some Reflections on Comparison as an Epistemic Practice’, Journal for the History of Knowledge, 2/1 (2021), 1–13 (Read here)
‘Non-Citizens Protests in Germany since the 1980s’, Moving the Social, 66 (2021), 63 –87 (Read here)

Between 1940 and 1941 around 70,000 adults with mental and physical disabilities were systematically murdered in Germany and Austria under a Nazi state-led programme called Aktion T4. They were deemed to be ‘life unworthy of life’.

The exhibition ‘Finding Ivy – A Life Worthy of Life’ tells the remarkable story of the 13 British-born victims of this state-sponsored killing programme targeted at disabled people. 

Some of these victims were from mixed British-German or British-Austrian marriages. Others were from the families of German and Austrian immigrants who moved to Britain to work in the early twentieth century before fatefully returning to Germany before the Second World War.

The accompanying event will feature an expert panel with Dr Helen Atherton (University of Leeds) and Dr Simon Jarrett (Open University), the curators of the exhibition, along with historian Dr Christopher Dillon (Kings College, London). They will not only discuss the T4 programme but also shed light on the meticulous research that has unearthed these 13 life stories.

The panel discussion will be followed by a reception during which visitors will also have the chance to view the exhibition. This event will take place as a hybrid event at the GHIL and online via Zoom. In order to attend this event, please register via Eventbrite to take part in person or online.

The exhibition will be on show in August and September 2024.

Our current IRP/MWF Tandem Fellows Dr Samira Junaid (Bengaluru) and Dr Jolita Zabarskaitė (Berlin) will discuss their project “‘Greater India’ from the perspective of South India and Malaya from the late colonial period to the early 1960s”.

Interviewer: Patrice G. Poutrus
Interviewee: Maria Alexopoulou

What is German history today, and where might it be going? The borders of German history as a field have become more porous and inclusive, looking at the global entanglement of the German lands from medieval to modern times. Colonial history has taken centre stage. Victim groups of Germany’s various violent pasts have long asked for recognition; these previously neglected histories are now increasingly being studied and heard. Queer and gender historians are not simply filling gaps but questioning the categories and methods of German history, as well as challenging the erasures of minoritized communities. The war in Ukraine raises new questions about Germany’s involvement in Europe’s east and its political consequences today, revealing blind spots in public knowledge about the Holocaust. Long-established ruptures have proven to be continuities on the pre- and post-1945 timeline as historians pay more attention to the history of race, racism, and antisemitism. As a result of these new histories, German memory culture is also undergoing a radical shift as an increasingly diverse society demands new forms of commemoration. We will take some of these topics as a starting point, yet we do not want to assume universality. Each of our interviewees will select and interview another expert—a model that will be continued in this new Instagram Live series. The outcome of this long-term debate is open, as historians and other people entering the conversation will reflect not simply on the past, but where the debate might go in the future.

Dr Maria Alexopoulou is a principal investigator at the Research Institute for Social Cohesionat the Center for Research on Antisemitism, at the Technische Universität Berlin and an unaffiliated lecturer at the Chair for Contemporary History at the University of Mannheim. She studied history and philosophy at Heidelberg University and holds a PhD in modern history from the Free Universität Berlin. Her main fields of research are the history of migration, the history of racism, and contemporary German and US history. Her habilitation ‘Rassistisches Wissen in der Transformation der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in eine Einwanderungsgesellschaft 1940–1990’ [Racist Knowledge in the Transformation of the Federal Republic of Germany into an Immigration Society 1940–1990] will be published in autumn 2024 by Wallstein Verlag.

Select publications:
Deutschland und die Migration: Geschichte einer Einwanderungsgesellschaft wider Willen (Ditzingen, 2020).
‘Ignoring Racism in the History of the German Immigration Society: Some Reflections on Comparison as an Epistemic Practice’, Journal for the History of Knowledge, 2/1 (2021), 1–13 (Read here)
‘Non-Citizens Protests in Germany since the 1980s’, Moving the Social, 66 (2021), 63 –87 (Read here)

The historian Dr Patrice G. Poutrus has published extensively on the economic and social history of the GDR, migration and flight in both German states during the Cold War, memories of the end of the GDR, and the political upheaval and transformation in East Germany. For several years, he was a research fellow at the (Centre for Contemporary History) in Potsdam and at the University of Erfurt. He was also Senior Fellow at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, and held the Professorship for Contemporary History at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg as well as the Professorship for Comparative Cultural and Social Anthropology of Late Modern Societies at the Europa-Universität Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder. Recently, he was a guest professor at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Women’s and Gender Studies at the Technische Universität Berlin. He is currently a research fellow at the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies at Osnabrück University, working on the project ‘Einwanderungsarchiv Hannover’, which involves the conception and implementation of an ‘immigration archive’ with a focus on the city’s history of migration.

Postponed from 9 February

Interviewer: Tiffany N. Florvil
Interviewee: Patrice G. Poutrus

What is German history today, and where might it be going? The borders of German history as a field have become more porous and inclusive, looking at the global entanglement of the German lands from medieval to modern times. Colonial history has taken centre stage. Victim groups of Germany’s various violent pasts have long asked for recognition; these previously neglected histories are now increasingly being studied and heard. Queer and gender historians are not simply filling gaps but questioning the categories and methods of German history, as well as challenging the erasures of minoritized communities. The war in Ukraine raises new questions about Germany’s involvement in Europe’s east and its political consequences today, revealing blind spots in public knowledge about the Holocaust. Long-established ruptures have proven to be continuities on the pre- and post-1945 timeline as historians pay more attention to the history of race, racism, and antisemitism. As a result of these new histories, German memory culture is also undergoing a radical shift as an increasingly diverse society demands new forms of commemoration. We will take some of these topics as a starting point, yet we do not want to assume universality. Each of our interviewees will select and interview another expert—a model that will be continued in this new Instagram Live series. The outcome of this long-term debate is open, as historians and other people entering the conversation will reflect not simply on the past, but where the debate might go in the future.

The historian Dr Patrice G. Poutrus has published extensively on the economic and social history of the GDR, migration and flight in both German states during the Cold War, memories of the end of the GDR, and the political upheaval and transformation in East Germany. For several years, he was a research fellow at the (Centre for Contemporary History) in Potsdam and at the University of Erfurt. He was also Senior Fellow at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, and held the Professorship for Contemporary History at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg as well as the Professorship for Comparative Cultural and Social Anthropology of Late Modern Societies at the Europa-Universität Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder. Recently, he was a guest professor at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Women’s and Gender Studies at the Technische Universität Berlin. He is currently a research fellow at the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies at Osnabrück University, working on the project ‘Einwanderungsarchiv Hannover’, which involves the conception and implementation of an ‘immigration archive’ with a focus on the city’s history of migration.

Tiffany N. Florvil is an associate professor of history at the University of New Mexico. She is a 20th century cultural historian of Germany whose work focuses on African/Black diasporic communities, internationalism, race, gender, and sexuality. Her work centers on Black Germans and their creation of new intellectual, cultural, and political practices. Florvil is currently a Joy Foundation Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute where she is working on a manuscript about the life of May Ayim, among the most important Black German thinkers and writers of her generation.

She is the author or coauthor of numerous articles and essays and three books, most recently, Black Germany-Schwarz, deutsch, feministisch-die Geschichte einer Bewegung (Ch. Links Verlag, 2023), a German translation, and Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement (University of Illinois Press, 2020), which won the Waterloo Centre for German Studies 2020 Book Prize, among other honors. She has received support from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the American Academy in Berlin, and others.

Interviewer: Mirjam S. Brusius
Interviewee: Tiffany N. Florvil

What is German history today, and where might it be going? The borders of German history as a field have become more porous and inclusive, looking at the global entanglement of the German lands from medieval to modern times. Colonial history has taken centre stage. Victim groups of Germany’s various violent pasts have long asked for recognition; these previously neglected histories are now increasingly being studied and heard. Queer and gender historians are not simply filling gaps but questioning the categories and methods of German history, as well as challenging the erasures of minoritized communities. The war in Ukraine raises new questions about Germany’s involvement in Europe’s east and its political consequences today, revealing blind spots in public knowledge about the Holocaust. Long-established ruptures have proven to be continuities on the pre- and post-1945 timeline as historians pay more attention to the history of race, racism, and antisemitism. As a result of these new histories, German memory culture is also undergoing a radical shift as an increasingly diverse society demands new forms of commemoration. We will take some of these topics as a starting point, yet we do not want to assume universality. We are therefore passing on the microphone to our first interviewee, Prof. Tiffany N. Florvil (University of New Mexico/The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University), author of Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement, who will then select and interview another expert—a model that will be continued in this new Instagram Live series. The outcome of this long-term debate is open, as historians and other people entering the conversation will reflect not simply on the past, but where the debate might go in the future.

Tiffany N. Florvil is an associate professor of history at the University of New Mexico. She is a 20th century cultural historian of Germany whose work focuses on African/Black diasporic communities, internationalism, race, gender, and sexuality. Her work centers on Black Germans and their creation of new intellectual, cultural, and political practices. Florvil is currently a Joy Foundation Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute where she is working on a manuscript about the life of May Ayim, among the most important Black German thinkers and writers of her generation.

She is the author or coauthor of numerous articles and essays and three books, most recently, Black Germany-Schwarz, deutsch, feministisch-die Geschichte einer Bewegung (Ch. Links Verlag, 2023), a German translation, and Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement (University of Illinois Press, 2020), which won the Waterloo Centre for German Studies 2020 Book Prize, among other honors. She has received support from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the American Academy in Berlin, and others.

Mirjam S. Brusius is a cultural historian based at the GHIL with a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge and an MA from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She works on the movement of visual and material culture between Europe, Asia, and Africa: from ancient artefacts entering Western museums, to photography moving into the Islamicate world. She is also a public historian, curator, and heritage consultant.

She has written books on the photography pioneer W. H. F. Talbot (Fotografie und museales Wissen: William Henry Fox Talbot, das Altertum und die Absenz der Fotografie, 2015; William Henry Fox Talbot: Beyond Photography, 2013). Her current interest in archaeological finds in transit informs her book Objects without Status (under contract with Oxford University Press). She is also writing a popular book on the overlooked fact that the majority of museum collections are held out of sight, a follow-up to Museum Storage and Meaning: Tales from the Crypt (2018). She recently edited a special issue of the GHIL Bulletin on the future of German memory culture and co-authored an article on how photographic archives help shape ideas of ‘heritage’. She is regular contributor to important newspapers and media in Germany and the UK. Her research has been funded by the British Academy, the Fulbright Commission, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In 2022, she won the prestigious Dan David Prize.

During the First World War, German civilians were interned as ‘enemy aliens’ in British Empire locations around the world. The biggest internment camp was Knockaloe on the Isle of Man, holding 22,000 prisoners. British citizens, white and non-white, were interned in Ruhleben camp near Berlin as a retaliatory measure, bringing the global experience of internment back to the German home front as well. For civilian internees across the world, long periods of isolation caused mental health problems in the form of the ‘barbed wire disease’. Humanitarian support came from the Spanish and the Swiss governments, as well as the Red Cross. The exhibition focuses on these global themes, opening up new perspectives and formats for presenting the history of wartime internment. Alongside eighteen panels, a Virtual Reality Experience will give viewers an immersive experience of Fort Napier Camp in South Africa.

This event will take place as a hybrid event at the GHIL and online via Zoom. In order to attend this event, please register via Eventbrite to take part in person or online.

Symposium and exhibition opening:

5.00 – 5.05 Welcome GHIL, Christina von Hodenberg

5.05 – 5.15 Internment in the British Empire, Panikos Panayi

5.15 – 5.25 Race and Internment: the Ruhleben camp near Berlin, Michelle Kiessling

5.25 – 5.35 Mental Health and Internment, Matthew Stibbe

5.35 – 5.45 Internment in Switzerland, Susan Barton

5.45 – 5.55 Spanish humanitarian efforts, Marina Perez de Arcos

5.55 – 6.00 Presenting internment in Virtual Reality, Stefan Manz, Paul Long

6.00 – 6.30 Discussion

6.30 – 8.00 Exhibition viewing and Virtual Reality demonstration

The exhibition Behind the Wire and Virtual Reality Experience will be shown in the German Historical Institute London until 30 June 2023. Academic lead contacts are Professor Stefan Manz (Aston University Birmingham; S.Manz@aston.ac.uk) and Professor Matthew Stibbe (Sheffield Hallam University; M.Stibbe@shu.ac.uk).

The Sjælland Letters: Unique letter formats and letterlocking techniques found in the Prize Papers collection. An online event organized by the Prize Papers Project and the Letterlocking team in cooperation with the German Historical Institute London

In this joint online event, we now present a very special collection of letters found in the Prize Papers collection. These letters were once found in a box of private papers and letters of Lieutenant George August Dossit D’Alban, who sailed on the Danish ship Sjælland, which was captured at the Cape of Good Hope in 1798. Most intriguing letter formats, letter folding and letterlocking techniques were found amongst D’Alban’s personal belongings. As the letters clearly show, D’Alban was a member of a Freemasons’ lodge.

During the first half of this one-hour event we present the Sjælland letters and their background. In the second half, Jana Dambrogio and Daniel Starza Smith will give a letterlocking workshop.

As part of the event, the letterlocking team will premiere two new letterlocking videos, which will allow ‘letterlockers’ worldwide to fold and lock as in original Prize Papers letters. The videos will feature one of the many nonagon and one of the many triangle formats in the collection. We will launch the videos to celebrate the exhibition: “Captured. The Materiality of the Prize Papers” at the German Historical Institute in London

This lecture will take place online via Zoom. For more information on the event and in order to register for this event, please follow this link to Eventbrite. 

Podiumsdiskussion

Der russische Krieg gegen die Ukraine stellt die EU auf die Probe. Statt der Aushandlung von Regeln im gemeinsamen Markt verlangen die jüngsten Ereignisse unmittelbare Reaktionen auf unbekanntem Terrain. Skeptikern schien bereits nach den Erfahrungen von Pandemie, Brexit, Flüchtlingswelle und der Eurokrise mehr als ungewiss, ob die EU ihr Versprechen eines friedlichen Europa, das sich nach außen erweitert und nach innen harmonisiert, würde einlösen können. Der Wortsinn von Krise ist Wendepunkt. Steht die EU an einem solchen historischen Wendepunkt, der über ihr zukünftiges Schicksal entscheidet?

Aus historischer Sicht ist es fragwürdig, die Geschichte der EG und später der EU als eine Geschichte stetiger Erweiterung und Vertiefung zu erzählen, die erst nach dem Vertrag von Maastricht von 1992 in verhängnisvolle Untiefen geriet. Die europäische Einigung hat ihre Richtung seit den Römischen Verträgen von 1957 wiederholt geändert und die damit heraufbeschworenen Konflikte haben diesen Prozess geprägt und bestimmt. Erst wenn die aktuellen Entwicklungen vor dem Hintergrund dieser weiter zurückreichenden Konfliktgeschichte der europäischen Integration diskutiert werden, erhält die Frage nach dem gegenwärtigen Zustand der EU eine klare Kontur.

Wie haben äußere und innere Krisen die Entwicklung der europäischen Integration in der Vergangenheit beeinflusst? Welche Vorstellungen von Europa prägen den Verlauf der europäischen Integration? Wie werden Hierarchien zwischen europäischen Regionen im Projekt der Integration reproduziert oder ausgeglichen? Welche politischen, gesellschaftlichen und wirtschaftlichen Bedürfnisse machen EU-Beitritt oder EU-Austritt für Staaten attraktiv? Was kann man aus der Skepsis gegenüber der europäischen Einigung für die zukünftige Förderung von Zusammenhalt in Europa lernen? Sind Aufstieg und plötzlicher Fall die passenden Parameter für die Deutung der jüngeren Entwicklung der europäischen Integration?

Panel:

• Martin Baumeister, Direktor des Deutschen Historischen Instituts Rom
• Christina von Hodenberg, Direktorin des Deutschen Historischen Instituts London
• Wolfgang Knöbl, Direktor des Hamburger Instituts für Sozialforschung
• Philipp Müller, Sprecher der Forschungsgruppe „Demokratie und Staatlichkeit“ und Koordinator des BMBFVerbundprojekts „Euroskepsis“ beim Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung
• Miloš Řezník, Direktor des Deutschen Historischen Instituts Warschau

The panel discussion will be held in German.

MWS-Europe-Lab

Until recently, European unification seemed to be a process of constant widening and deepening, then after a series of crises a sceptical view on the EU became more prominent. Now – confronted with another war at its borders – the perception of the EU changes again. Has today's EU perhaps only become what it is because of crises and opponents of integration?

We would like to discuss these and other questions with you at our MWS-Europe-Lab. In this interactive event format, people from different regions and disciplines are brought together. Discussions take place in a relaxed world café atmosphere in which each participant can express his or her views. The goal is to develop a network of new insights and perspectives. Finally, the most important results will be summarized once again for everyone and introduced into the subsequent panel discussion.

Table Hosts and Topics

• Olga Gontarska (DHI Warschau) and Antonio Carbone (DHI Rom): Envisioning Europe(s)
• Beata Jurkowicz (DHI Warschau) and David Lawton (DHI London): Competition of European Alternatives
• Andrea Carlo Martinez (DHI Rom) and Alexander Hobe (HIS): A Union of Sceptics
• Katharina Troll (HIS) and William King (DHI London): Should I Stay or Should I Go?

The MWS-Europe-Lab will be in English.

Flyer (PDF file)

Poster (PDF file)

Introduction: Professor Christina von Hodenberg (GHIL)

Chair: Dr James Ellison (QMUL)

Panel: Prof Piers Ludlow (LSE), Dr Andrea Mammone (University of Rome La Sapienza), Dr Eirini Karamouzi (Sheffield)

Venue: GHIL

This evening panel is part of a conference organised by the ‘(De)Constructing Europe – EU-Scepticism in European Integration History’ project (led by the GHI London, the GHI Rome, the GHI Warsaw and the Hamburg Institute for Social Research). During this event, experts will discuss European integration and alternative visions of European integration from multiple perspectives.  

This event will take place online via Zoom. In order to attend, please register here.

Roundtable discussion to celebrate the launch of the online exhibition Forms-Voices-Networks: Feminism and the Media

How have women used the radio to advocate for women’s rights? What role does the radio play in the history of feminism?

Join us for an online panel conversation on women’s radio and feminist activism in Germany and Britain during the twentieth century to mark the launch of the German Historical Institute London’s online exhibition Forms, Voices, Networks: Feminism and the Media.

From BBC Women’s Hour to Haben Sie fünf Minuten Zeit (Do You Have 5 Minutes), radio has been an important vehicle for discussing women’s issues and reaching female audiences. Radio has also enabled women journalists, producers and editors to redefine conventions, challenge gender norms and carve a place for women’s voices and labour in the media. This panel brings together Kate Lacey (Sussex) and Caroline Mitchell (Sunderland) in a discussion on women’s radio making and radio’s role in the advancement of gender justice in Germany and Britain in the twentieth century. From both and academic, historical and practical perspective, Lacey and Mitchell will discuss the opportunities and limitations that radio has provided for women and women’s rights. They will ask: How has radio, both mainstream and community, provided a unique space for the discussion of rights? How have women used the radio to challenge gender norms? What does studying radio reveal about the trajectory of feminism in Germany and Britain?

Kate Lacey (BA London, PhD Liverpool) is Professor of Media History and Theory in the School of Media, Arts and Humanities at the University of Sussex, and Director of CHASE, the AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership in Southeast England. Her research focuses on radio history, media publics, and listening as civic action. She has published widely, including two monographs, the first of which, Feminine Frequencies: Gender, German Radio and the Public Sphere, 1923 to 1945, explored the constitutive role of gender in the development of broadcasting, and the second, Listening Publics: The Politics and Experience of Listening in the Media Age, which proposed 'listening' as a rich concept with which to analyse the politics and experience of media communications in Europe and America across the long twentieth century. She was a founding member of the Radio Studies Network and sits on the editorial boards of The Radio Journal and The International Journal of Cultural Studies. 

Dr. Caroline Mitchell is Associate Professor of Radio and Participation at the University of Sunderland, UK where she teaches on its longstanding MA in Radio, Audio and Podcasting  and leads a number of research projects in the area of community media production and participatory research methods. She was co-founder of Fem FM, the first women's radio station in the UK (1992) and co-curated digital archive of the station in 2014. She has published widely about women and radio, participatory archiving and community mapping practices. As a lead member of ´Transnational Radio Encounters´ research project she was part of the team that developed the innovative global online platform radio.garden. She is a member of Women´s Radio in Europe Network and was a member of the board of Sound Women until the organisation closed in 2016.

In order to register for this event, please follow this link to Eventbrite.

Roundtable discussion to celebrate the launch of the online exhibition Forms-Voices-Networks: Feminism and the Media

What has recognition meant for feminists? Who have they wanted recognition from and why has it been so important?

Join us for an online panel conversation on the politics of recognition in feminism and its relationship to the media in Germany, Britain, and India to mark the launch of the German Historical Institute London’s online exhibition Forms, Voices, Networks: Feminism and the Media.

The panel brings together scholars Tiffany Florvil (New Mexico), Ingrid Sharp (Leeds), and D-M Withers (Reading) in a discussion of feminist recognition in the twentieth century. Drawing on their research and professional work, Florvil, Sharpe, and Withers will discuss the ways in which feminists have struggled for recognition and how the media has both provided a space for and shaped this fight. While campaigns for recognition have often been equated with political participation and women’s suffrage, the discussion will move beyond this to explore other forms of recognition feminists have sought across Britain, Germany, and India. In doing so, the roundtable reflects on the very meaning of recognition and asks who is recognized and who is not? Who to seek recognition from, and what to be recognized as? Should ‘recognition’ be an aim for the feminist movement at all?

Speaker biographies

Tiffany N. Florvil is an Associate Professor of 20^th-century European Women’s and Gender History at the University of New Mexico. She specializes in the histories of post-1945 Europe, the African diaspora, Black internationalism, as well as gender and sexuality. She has published pieces in the Journal of Civil and Human Rights and The German Quarterly. Florvil has also coedited the volume, Rethinking Black German Studies: Approaches, Interventions and Histories, as well as published chapters in Gendering Post-1945 German History and To Turn this Whole World Over. Her manuscript, Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement, with the University of Illinois Press, offers the first full-length study of the history of the Black German movement of the 1980s to the 2000s. The book recently won an Honorable mention from the DAAD/GSA Book Prize in Literature and Cultural Studies at the German Studies Association and was a Finalist for the ASWAD Outstanding First Book Prize. She is on the Board of the International Federation for Research in Women’s History (IFRWH), on the Advisory Board for the Black German Heritage and Research Association, and on the Editorial Board for Central European History. She is also an editor of the “Imagining Black Europe” book series at Peter Lang Press.

Ingrid Sharp is Professor of German Cultural and Gender History in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of Leeds. Her research interests include feminist opposition to the First World War, women’s role in the Revolutions of 1918 and the international history of women as political agents. Her co-edited volume with Matthew Stibbe Women Activists between War and Peace. Europe 1918-1923 was published by Bloomsbury in 2017. She edited Age of Empire 1815-1920, volume 5 of A Cultural History of Peace, also published by Bloomsbury in 2020.

D-M Withers is a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Reading and author of Virago Reprints and Modern Classics: The Timely Business of Feminist Publishing and Feminism, Digital Culture and the Politics of Transmission: Theory, Practice and Cultural Heritage. They are also developing a slate of screenplays and researching the life and enterprises of populist publisher Paul Hamlyn.

The exhibition, Forms, Voices, Networks explores the intersections between the 20^th century growth of mass media and women’s rights movements in a transnational context. Through a series of snapshot examples, it illustrates how feminists have mobilized and negotiated media to advance women’s rights and contest gender stereotypes at different moments, while also attending to the ambivalence of women’s relation to the media across different time periods and contexts. The exhibition is now available online at www.feminismandthemedia.co.uk.

In order to register for this event, please follow this link to Eventbrite.

Launch event for the online exhibition Forms, Voices, Networks: Feminism and the Media

What is the political role of the photograph and how does it intersect with the global history of feminist activism? 

Join us for an online panel conversation on photography and feminism to mark the launch of the German Historical Institute London’s online exhibition Forms, Voices, Networks: Feminism and the Media.

The panel brings together the leading photographers, artists and activists, Sheba Chhachhi and Mary Ann Kennedy. With discussant Na’ama Klorman-Eraqi, Chhachhi and Kennedy will draw on their creative practice to consider the diverse and changing ways feminists have mobilised photography as a form of political activism from the late 20th century to the present. The discussion addresses how feminists have interrogated and re-imagined the role of photography, subverting dominant historical narratives, renegotiating the relationship between the photographer and the photographed, and envisioning feminist futures: what kind of history does the photograph tell? Who or what is included—and who is not? What—or whose—claims does the photograph inscribe?

Sheba Chhachhi is an installation artist/ photographer who investigates questions of gender, eco-philosophy, violence and visual cultures, with emphasis on the recuperation of cultural memory. An activist/photographer in the women’s movement in the 1980s, Chhachhi moved on to create intimate, sensorial encounters through large multimedia installations. Her work seks to bring the contemplative into the political. She has exhibited widely including the Gwangju, Taipei, Moscow, Singapore and Havana biennales; her works are held in significant public and private collections, including Tate Modern, UK, Kiran Nadar Museum, Delhi, BosePacia, New York, Singapore Art Museum, Devi Art Foundation, Delhi and National Gallery of Modern Art, India.  She was awarded the Juror’s Prize for contemporary art in Asia by the Singapore Art Museum in 2011 and in 2018 the Thun Prize for Art & Ethics. Chhachhi speaks, writes and teaches in both institutional and non -formal contexts. She lives and works in New Delhi.

Mary Ann Kennedy grew up in an inner-city neighbourhood of Chicago in the 60’s and 70’s – a place and time that laid bare structured, institutional socio-political inequalities of class, race and gender. Education is key in enabling women to enter the political and economic sphere and so she soon switched from a get-a-decent-education-but you’ll-only-get-married all-girls high school to the formerly all-male Technical High School College Prep. Having initially trained as an architect, she soon became aware that how we live is as heavily circumscribed through how we perceive the world – and our place within it. The growing awareness of the role photography plays in forming our vision of the world, and our place within it, led to a desire to challenge current narratives, to celebrate creativity as a vehicle for change – and to work within education as a political act. She studied with Simon Watney and Victor Burgin and collaborated with Jo Spence, which led to the establishment of a commercial studio in London engaging with educational publishers, campaigns and community arts groups. Mary Ann is a founding member of Photography Workshop (Edinburgh)/Portfolio Gallery, a founding member of WildFires network for women in Scotland who work in and with photography and is currently the Programme Leader for the BA(Hons) Photography degree at Edinburgh Napier University.

Na’ama Klorman-Eraqi is a lecturer in the Department of Art History at the University of Haifa.  Among her publications: The Visual Is Political: Feminist Photography and Countercultural Activity in 1970s Britain, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2019; she also published articles, in journals such as Feminist Media Studies, Photographies and Third Text. Her research interests include political intersections between feminism, protest movements and photography, as well as social-political aspects of contemporary art. 

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The exhibition Forms, Voices, Networks explores the intersections between the growth of mass media and women’s rights movements in a transnational context during the 20th century. Centred on the histories of feminisms and the media in Britain, Germany and India, it draws attention to little-known or unheard voices and stories and draws connections between activists and the media across time and space.

Developed by the International Standing Working Group on Medialization and Empowerment, curated by Maya Caspari (GHIL) and coordinated by Jane Freeland (GHIL)

Image from See Red Women’s Workshop: ‘Protest’. 1974 (screenprint)

THE EXHIBITION IS NOW LIVE, VISIT IT HERE: WWW.FEMINISMANDTHEMEDIA.CO.UK

Organized by the Max Weber Stiftung India Branch Office and the International Standing Working Group on Medialization and Empowerment at the German Historical Institute London

Invited Speakers:

Helma Lutz, Goethe Universität Frankfurt

Janaki Nair, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Samita Sen, University of Cambridge

Paula-Irene Villa, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

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