Careful Empowerment: Gender and Queer History in Challenging Times

A Keynote Lecture by Benno Gammerl, Professor of History of Gender and Sexuality, European University Institute (EUI).

Based on my experience of teaching, researching and writing about histories of gender and sexual diversity, particularly in Germany since the 19th century, I will argue that historians need to further develop queer and intersectional approaches, criticize hetero- as well as homonormative power structures and respond to anti-gender polemics by engaging with the scholars/activists distinction also in methodological terms. The talk will propose that questioning binaries does not necessarily mean to abandon them altogether.

Benno Gammerl is professor of history of gender and sexuality at the EUI in Florence. Intersectionality and difference, exclusion and participation are at the heart of his research into European history from the 19th to the 21st century. Queerness in Germany, mobility and intimacy, the Habsburg Empire and the British Empire, oral history and the history of emotions are among the topics Gammerl explores. Most recently, he co-edited the Handbuch queere Zeitgeschichten [in english: Handbook of Queer Contemporary History].