Merle Ingenfeld

Current Program (including year of entry):

Ph.D. History (Cotutelle: Cologne University, 2017 and Carleton University, 2019).

Supervisors:

Prof. Jennifer Evans (Carleton University), Prof. Anke Ortlepp and Prof. (e.m.) Norbert Finzsch (University of Cologne)

Academic Interests:

History of Gender and Sexuality, History of Psychiatry, Transatlantic History and History of Migration, 20^th Century German and U.S. History, Social and Cultural History Approaches, Queer and Trans* Theory

Select Publications and Current Projects:

“Conference Report: Entangling the Pacific and Atlantic Worlds: Past and Present. A Symposium Commemorating Helmut Schmidt, 25.03.2019 – 27.03.2019 Berkeley”, H-Soz-Kult, 1 October, 2019, www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-8464; also published in GHI Bulletin 65 (Fall 2019), https://www.ghi-dc.org/fileadmin/user_upload/GHI_Washington/Publications/Bulletin65/147.pdf.

“Review of ‘The Straight Line. How the Fringe Science of Ex-Gay Therapy Reoriented Sexuality’ by Tom Waidzunas (Minneapolis 2015)”, Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender History Newsletter, Fall 2018, pp. 8–11.

“Neither Really Global nor Imperial? – How to Conceptualise Connectivity over Countries, Empires, Continents and Oceans” (together with Tom Menger), GRAINES: Graduate Interdisciplinary Network for European Studies, 13 June 2018, https://grainesnetwork.com/2018/06/13/farewell-reims-2018/.

„Butler, transregional? – Anmerkungen zu Judith Butlers Vorträgen an der Uni Köln“, Trafo – Blog for Transregional Research, 27 January 2017, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/4724.

„Diversity History Months – Monate des Gedächtnisses“, Wissen in Verbindung – Weber 2.0 | Wissenschaftliche Blogs der Max Weber Stiftung, 3 March 2016, https://mws.hypotheses.org/32245.

„Hip-Hop am Mittag. Rezension der Ausstellung ‚The Early Days – HipHop in der DDR‘ (Deutsches Historisches Institut Washington, DC)“, Wissen in Verbindung – Weber 2.0 | Wissenschaftliche Blogs der Max Weber Stiftung, 7 September 2014, https://mws.hypotheses.org/21026.

Select Conference Contributions:

“’Die Kirche und Wir’ – Church, Religion, and German-Speaking Queer Communities after World War II”, 43^rd Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, 5 October 2019, Portland, OR (USA).

“Accessing LGBTQ Sources and Materials at the Library of Congress. Librarian and Researcher in Conversation”, together with Megan Metcalf (LGBT+ and Women’s Studies Reference Librarian), 10 May 2019, Library of Congress (USA).

“The Cure: A Transnational History of Conversion Therapy”, 19 September 2018, “Annual Retreat of the German Historical Institute Washington”, Washington DC (USA).

“Global Europe and Trans-Atlantic Knowledge Exchange on Homosexuality”, 6 June 2018, 6th GRAINES Summer School “Global Europe. Connecting European History, 17th to 21th Century”, Science Po Reims (France).

“Sexuelle (Re-)Orientierung in historischer Perspektive – Ein Annäherungsversuch an eine schwer (be)greifbare Neigungskategorie”, 14 October 2017, 5th Workshop der Studierenden und Young Professionals in der AG Angewandte Geschichte/Public History im VHD „Historische Dimensionen von Geschlecht“, University of Hamburg (Germany).

“‘Nichts als Muttersöhnchen?’ – Wissenschaftsgläubigkeit und ihr Einfluss auf Amerikanische Schwule Identitäten vor Stonewall (1955-1965)”, 20 September 2016, 51. Deutscher Historikertag, Hamburg University (Germany).

“‘Don’t Tell Mom!’ Homosexuals and Their Mothers Before Gay Liberation (1955–1969)”, 30 October 2015. “Master Projects”, Student Symposium of the North American Studies Program, University of Bonn (Germany).

Description of Research:

My PhD explores the history of practices aimed at changing sexual orientation in the 20th century from a transnational perspective. The geographical focus of this project lays on the exchange between German States (late Weimar Republic, Third Reich, GDR and FDR) and the US, as the two regions associated with world-leading research into sexuality, as well as places of emergent homosexual rights movements in the early and mid-20th century (1910s/1920s and the 1950s/1960s, respectively). Diverging from prior studies that investigated “conversion therapy” within the boundaries of one nation state and within one political regime, this doctoral thesis attempts to get a bigger picture, and shed more light on the manifold transnational connections and continuities immanent in contemporary sources, drawing from both, medical professional and activist archives on two continents.

This project is part of the a.r.t.e.s. EUmanities at the University of Cologne, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No 713600.