Sexuality, Women’s & Gender Studies Dr. Samuel Clowes Huneke '11 Public Lecture: "Queer Liberation in Cold War Germany"

The Department of German at Amherst College invites you to a public lecture, “Queer Liberation in Cold War Germany”, by prize-winning historian of modern Europe and Assistant Professor of History at George Mason University, Professor Samuel Clowes Huneke '11, on Tuesday, April 4, 2023 at 4:00pm in Stirn Auditorium, Amherst College. The lecture is open to the public and all are welcome.

About the Lecture: Queer Liberation in Cold War Germany
Although the Nazi government imprisoned tens of thousands of queer people during its twelve years in power, Germany is today lauded as a leader in LGBTQ rights. This talk charts the country’s remarkable evolution in matters of sexuality, highlighting the brutal persecution that gay men and other queer groups continued to experience in the decades after World War II as well as their remarkable liberation efforts during the Cold War’s later decades in both democratic West Germany and communist East Germany. Drawing on dozens of interviews and untapped archives, this talk reveals that East Germany was in many ways far more progressive on queer issues than was West Germany.

About Professor Samuel Clowes Huneke:
Broadly interested in how everyday life intersects with and shapes the relationships between citizens and states, his research focuses on the history of gender and sexuality, legal history, and the history of dictatorship and democracy in twentieth-century Germany. Huneke received a B.A. summa cum laude in German and Mathematics from Amherst College in 2011, an M.Sc. with Distinction in Applicable Mathematics from the London School of Economics in 2012, and a Ph.D. in History from Stanford University in 2019. He is the author of States of Liberation: Gay Men between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany (University of Toronto Press, 2022) as well as numerous scholarly articles and chapters. He writes regularly for public venues including Boston Review, The Point, LA Review of Books, and The Washington Post.

Made possible with the support of the Amherst College Departments of German, History, Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies, the program in European Studies, and the Lamont Fund.