The international research network on „Military, War, and Gender/Diversity“ (MKGD): MKGD Online Research Colloquium (Web)

Time: Mo., 12.05.2025, 4:00-6:00 pm (CET)
Venue: virtual space (Web)

The monthly colloquium of the research network „Military, War, and Gender/Diversity“ (known by its German acronym MKGD) continues in this summer semester. The recently enlarged team of organizers is very much looking forward to welcoming you online! (Web)

Elissa Mailänder: Gender, Sexuality and Violence in the Holocaust Revisited (Web)

Since the Nuremberg Trials, perpetrators have been the focus of political debates and historical research. For decades, scholars referred to the killers as men, but few considered them as gendered and sexually situated beings. Exploring masculinities and femininities, as gender historians have done, tells us a great deal about how the occupation, colonization, and exploitation of human labor function, how mass violence or genocide became attractive career prospects for certain people, and how wartime experiences shaped societal relationships and postwar identities. Applied to Nazi perpetrators, mass violence, and the Holocaust, gender-attentive observations allow us to dig deeply into the often-fraught dynamics of (para)military masculinities, to decode the genderedness of institutions, and to identify ways in which men compete with one another, all elements that are propitious to violence.

Moderation: Tanja Bührer (Paris Lodron Univ. Salzburg)

Elissa Mailänder is an Associate Professor of contemporary history at Sciences Po and works at the Sciences Po Center for History (CHSP) in Paris. A historian of gender and sexuality and a specialist of Nazi Germany and World War II, she focuses on the history of violence that she analyses from a material, social, political, and cultural dimension. Her most recent monograph is: Amour, mariage, sexualité. Une histoire intime du nazisme (1930-1950) (Éditions du Seuil, 2021).

Full Colloquium Programme (Web)