Materiality and Memory in East German LGBT Communities, 1980s to the Present
PhD project
My dissertation examines the networks of materiality, care, and media East German LGBT citizens built during and after the GDR. Analyzing sources like samizdat and political newsletters, I explore how the creation and circulation of these materials both documented and actively shaped East German LGBT communities. These primary sources also index how LGBT East Germans archived and made visible their former and ongoing lives during German reunification. My project expands on existing scholarship on the GDR's material culture by focusing on a network of human-object relationships that indicate distinctively queer and anti-consumerist possibilities. Critiques of homonormativity and capitalism illustrate that under western models of queer civil rights movements, our role as consumers has become the foundation on which publics conceive queer visibility. I am interested in histories that evince a different way of relating to objects and media, one that may aim for LGBT visibility, but not necessarily through means of consumerism.
During my stay at the ZZF, I am conducting research primarily at the Schwules Museum and the Robert-Havemann-Gesellschaft.
During her stay at the ZZF Madeline Adams researches in Dep. III: Department III: Media and Information Society.