German Historical Institute Rome; German Historical Institute Washington D.C.; Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte Hamburg; LWL-Institut für westfälische Regionalgeschichte Münster (Web)

Time: 20.-22.05.2026
Venue: Roma
Registration: 17.05.2026

Femicide, sexualised violence in war zones, mass shootings, #MeToo: Questions regarding the links between gender and violence are not only a near-constant focus of the German media. Particularly with the rise of social media, debates on the interplay between gender and violence have come to shape the everyday life of the global community. However, the saturation of public discourse with gender-specific narratives regarding the legitimacy or illegitimacy of physical assaults is by no means, according to the basic premise of this conference, exclusively a contemporary phenomenon. Rather, it can be traced back at least to the 19th century and the spread of popular print media, as well as to the simultaneous rise in the significance of the human sciences in explaining deviant behaviour. The focus is on the interpretation of certain behaviours as ‘violent’ or ‘non-violent’, the associated gender hierarchies, and the establishment of legitimacy – for example, through media coverage, by law enforcement agencies or in court, but also in individual interpretation and memory.
Furthermore, the conference examines whether and in what ways debates on violence and gender interacted with other categories of social inequality, particularly race, religion and class. The proposed conference addresses the long history of public negotiations on gender and violence and the associated power dynamics, and raises, not least, the question of what role those affected by violence themselves played in these negotiation processes. The thematic scope of the research includes, among other things, the history of the representation of intimate partner violence, the evolution of forensic theories, violence perpetrated by women in colonial contexts, and the memory and legal interpretation of sexual offences.

Programme

Panels: Representing Intimate Partner Violence | Gendered Spaces – Gendered Violence? | Politics and Activism: Public Negotiations of Gender and Violence | Changing Legal Approaches to Gender and Violence | Male War, Female Peace? Gendered Violence within Military and Martial Contexts Harming which Bodies? | Intersecting Forms of Violence

May 20, 2026

Keynote: 6:00 p.m.: Keynote: Mara Keire (Univ. of Oxford, UK): „Meet the Swinger“: Sex, Violence, and Photography in the United States, 1965-1995

May 21, 2026
– 9:30: Arrival at the conference venue / Check-in
– 10:00: Welcome and introduction: Petra Terhoeven, Raphael Rössel, Claudia Kemper, Daniel Gerster

10:30: Panel I: Representing Intimate Partner Violence
– Maren Röger (GWZO / Univ. of Leipzig): Naturalization and Pathologization: (Media) Interpretations of Intimate Partner Violence in the Long Twentieth Century
– Alberto Rizzeli (Univ. of Padova): The Via Sistina Drama. Judging Male Violence Against Women in a late-19th Century Cause Célèbre
– Julia Menges (Univ. of Kassel): The Media Debate on Domestic Violence in West Germany and France in the 1970s
– Chair: Raphael Rössel

12:45: Panel II: Gendered Spaces – Gendered Violence?
– Kristy Campbell (Univ. of the Bundeswehr Munich): Gendered spaces of colonial violence: How the ‚intimate‘ sphere becomes a space of women’s violent agency in German Southwest Africa (1884-1915)
– Emma Teworte (Univ. of Oxford, UK): ‘She looked like a beaten dog’: Gender-based violence, the family, and abortion in 1930s-1950s Germany
– Zhanna Popova (International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam): Class or Gender Interests First? Approaching gendered violence at the workplace
– Chair: Hannah Ahlheim

2:45: Panel III: Politics and Activism: Public Negotiations of Gender and Violence
– Elisabeth Kimmerle (ZZF Potsdam): Historicizing Femicide. Feminist Activism, Gender, and Violence in 1970s-80s West Germany
– Amrei Kienle (Univ. of Tübingen): Gender-specific negotiations of political violence and their representation in the media in West Germany and Austria (1945/49-1959)
– Catherine Davies (Univ. of Zurich): Feminist Movements and Crime Policy: Comparing the US, France, and (West) Germany, 1970s-1990s
– Chair: Daniel Gerster

4:45: Panel IV: Changing Legal Approaches to Gender and Violence
– Lisa Hellriegel (Univ. of Bremen): Gender on Trial: Rape in German Court Cases, 1920s-1950s
– Emilia Musumeci (Univ. of Teramo): Impossible Violence: Forensic Medicine, Criminal Law, and the Myth of Anatomical Consent in Italy (19th-20th c.)
– Sabina Mompó Toribio (Autonomous Univ. of Barcelona): “That woman’s moral conduct is deplorable.” The punishment of female transgression through ordinary judicial proceedings for sexual violence (1936-1948)
– Chair: Lars Döpking

May 22, 2026

10:00: Panel V: Male War, Female Peace? Gendered Violence within Military and Martial Contexts
– Kim Bootsma / Henk de Jong (Netherlands Defense Academy, Breda): Female War Correspondents, Gender, and Representations of Wartime Violence (1944-1945)
– Louise Earnshaw (Univ. of Leeds): Behind the High Walls: Captivity, Endurance, and Gendered Narratives of Violence in First World War POW Testimonies
– Chair: Claudia Kemper

11:15: Panel VI: Harming which Bodies?
– Kena Stüwe (Humboldt Univ. Berlin): Of Body and of Structures – The Issue of Forced Pregnancies in the German Movement for Birth Regulation in the early 20th century
– Eva Payne (Univ. of Mississippi): Selling the Body? The relationship between commercial sex and violent sports in the 20th century United States
– Paula Muhr (Brand Univ. of Applied Sciences Hamburg / Technical University of Berlin): Gender and Violence in Medical Accounts of Hysteria and Functional Neurological Disorder, 19th-21st Centuries
– Chair: Petra Terhoeven

1:45: Panel VII: Intersecting Forms of Violence
– Anna Horstmann (Bielefeld Univ.): Gendered Experiences of Violence of Children in Germany during the Second World War
– Ellinor Schweighöfer (Goethe Univ. Frankfurt am Main): “I don’t like Mondays.” Amok and the question of gender
– Susan Grayzel (Utah State Univ.): Reproduction at War: Pregnant Bodies & Spaces of Violence
– Chair: Vera Grund

3:30: Joint concluding discussion, Moderators: Raphael Rössel; Claudia Kemper

4:00 p.m.: End of the conference

Contact: Raphael Rössel, GHI Washington, Daniel Gerster, FZH, Claudia Kemper, LWL

Source: HSozKult (Web)