Samuel Clowes Huneke, Assistant Professor, History and Art History, has been awarded a Sharon Abramson Research Grant from the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University. The award will enable him to complete research for his forthcoming book on lesbians in Nazi Germany.
For many decades after the end of World War II, the fates of queer women were ignored. Because female homosexuality had not been criminalized explicitly, historians long argued that lesbians were not persecuted by the Nazi regime.
In contrast, Huneke’s book, which is under advanced contract with Aevo-University of Toronto Press, argues that queer women under Nazism faced forms of persecution shaped by misogyny as well as anti-gay animus. The book further contends that in spite of this persecution, queer women sought to carve out spaces of community and tolerance for themselves and that their tenacity in the face of fascism can serve as a model for queer politics in our own time.
The Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University awards Sharon Abramson Research Grants annually to support research related to the Holocaust.
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