The Society of Fellows hosts the Thursday Lecture Series (TLS), which runs regularly throughout the academic year. The Fall Semester TLS, our Fellows present their own work, chaired by Columbia faculty.

Liminal Lives: Trans Before and After Nazism

Lecture by Zavier Nunn
Chaired by Gareth Williams

The story of trans life under Nazism is anticipated as tragic. Following the hard-won recognitions of gay and lesbian victims of the Holocaust and in the maelstrom of contemporary global attacks on trans existence, scholarly and public investments in this history are at their apex—provoking debates in the German Bundestag and libel cases. Yet the content of this history remains largely unknown. Using granular archival research, Zavier Nunn’s first book, Trans Liminality and the Paranoid Past: Subjectivity and the State, Germany 1919-45, explores the micro and macro registers of how everyday trans life was experienced, policed, and cut short across the Weimar and Nazi regimes, sometimes in surprising—but always uneven—ways. This talk sketches out the contours and stakes of this monograph, the first definitive work on trans life before and after the Nazi's rise to power.

The Eldorado, Berlin, 1933. Photo Credit, Landesarchiv Berlin, Germany.

Fall Thursday Lecture Series events are open to Columbia-affiliated faculty, students, and invited guests. All others interested in attending, please email the SOF/Heyman at [email protected].

Please email [email protected] to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs.