Dr. Bodie Ashton

bodie.ashton@uni-erfurt.de

Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter des VolkswagenStiftung-Freigeist Projekts "The Other Global Germany: Transnational Criminality and Deviant Globalization in the 20th Century" (Historisches Seminar)

Contact

Lehrgebäude 4 / Raum 115

Office hours

nach Vereinbarung

Visiting address

Campus
Nordhäuser Straße 63
99089 Erfurt

Mailing address

Universität Erfurt
Philosophische Fakultät
Globalgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts
Postfach 90 02 21
99105 Erfurt

Dr. Bodie Ashton

Curriculum Vitae

from 2021
Postdoctoral researcher at the Universität Erfurt on the VolkswagenStiftung Freigeist project “The Other Global Germany: Transnational Criminality and Deviant Globalization in the 20th Century” — postdoctoral research project: “Between ‘Goodbye to Berlin’ and ‘Off to Casablanca’: Queer Migration and Border Transgressions in Twentieth-Century (West) Germany"

2022
Winner of the 2022 Diversity & Inclusion Prize, German History Society, for "The Parallel Lives of Liddy Bacroff: Transgender (Pre)History and the Tyranny of the Archive in Twentieth-Century Germany."

2018–2020
Researcher and lecturer in Legal History at the Universität Passau, Chair of Civil Law, German and European Legal History

2016–2018
Professional Academic Editor at the Universität Passau on the European Research Council Advanced Grant research project “Reconsidering Constitutional Formations” „Reconsidering Constitutional Formations“ (ReConFort)

2015–2016
Research assistant at The David Roche Foundation (North Adelaide, Australia)

2015
Research assistant in the planning phase of the Sir John Monash Centre, Australian National Memorial (Villers-Bretonneaux, France)

2009–2014
Ph.D. in History at the University of Adelaide (Australia) under the supervision of Prof. Robin Prior and Dr. Gareth Pritchard: “The Kingdom of Württemberg and the Making of Germany, 1815-1871”

2009
Australian Postgraduate Award

2008
Bachelor of Arts with First-Class Honours in Modern History at the University of Adelaide (Australia) under the supervision of Prof. Frederic S. Zuckerman: “Stalin’s Bitter Pill: Ideology, Diplomacy and the Nazi-Soviet Pact”

2005–2007
Bachelor of Arts (History/German Studies) at the University of Adelaide (Australia)

Research Areas

  • History of identity formation
  • Queer / LGBTQIA+ history
  • History of the German Mittelstaaten in the 19th century
  • German history of the 20th century
  • Imperialism and colonialism

Research Project

Between ‘Goodbye to Berlin’ and ‘Off to Casablanca’: Queer Migration and Border Transgressions in Twentieth-Century (West) Germany

Germany’s relationship with its queer history is a difficult topic. For many outside Germany, it has often given them refuge to explore their identities, from W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood in the 1920s, to Queen frontman Freddie Mercury in the 1980s. At the same time, however, that history is marred by repression and iniquities; extermination in the Nazi period, the continuation of laws illegalising consensual homosexual relationships after the war, and plans to build special ‘camps’ for HIV sufferers during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s are three examples.

Underpinning this history, however, is one of movement and migration, sometimes explicitly opposed by authorities. This ‘deviant’ or ‘illicit’ behaviour was found not only in the formulation of queer identities, but also in the supply and demand of an often-illegal queer sex trade. In general, but not exclusively, this can be divided into two distinct periods: prewar, in which parts of Germany became international hubs of queer activity, and postwar, in which an increasing number of West Germans, alienated by conservative reaction, travelled across the world, seeking sex, affirmation, or even gender confirmation surgeries that, prior to 1933, had been available within Germany itself.

This project investigates the reciprocal movements of queer migrations across German geographical and normative borders throughout the twentieth century. In doing so, it offers insight into histories that have so far been lost to the traditional, homonormative narrative, while at the same time challenging the homogenisation of German queer history, and questioning what we mean when we talk of a ‘German’ queer history in an increasingly globalised century.

The research project is part of the third-party funded project "The Other Global Germany: Transnational Criminality and Deviant Globalization in the 20th Century" (VolkswagenStiftung Freigeist Projekt).

Media Engagements

Podcasts

Documentaries

Newspaper articles & blog posts

Panels

Interviews

Selected Publications

Monographs and Edited Volumes

The Pet Shop Boys and the Political: Queerness, Culture, Identity and Society (edited volume, London: Bloomsbury, 2024).

The Kingdom of Württemberg and the Making of Germany, 1815-1871 (London: Bloomsbury, 2017).
 

(Co-)Editorships

Transnational Queer Histories (book series, Berlin: De Gruyter, since 2022), with Sabrina Mittermeier.

Talking Bodies, vol. II: Bodily Languages, Selfhood and Transgression (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), with Amy Bonsall and Jonathan Hay.
 

Journal Articles

"The Parallel Lives of Liddy Bacroff: Transgender (Pre-)History and the Tyranny of the Archive in Twentieth-Century Germany", German History 42, no. 1 (2024): doi: <https://doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghad071>.

“Kingship, Sexuality, and Courtly Masculinity: Frederick the Great and Prussia on the Cusp of Modernity”, ANU Historical Journal II 1, no. 1 (2019): 109-35.

“‘Subjects of our most gracious Majesty’: Constitutionalism and Constitutionalisation in South Australia Colony: An Agenda for Future Research”, Giornale di Storia Costituzionale 37, no. 1 (2019): 243-61.

“Constitutionalism as a Force of Popular Loyalty: Constitutional and Unconstitutional Württemberg in the Nineteenth Century”, Giornale di Storia Costituzionale 34, no. 2 (2017): 137-60.

“In Defence of Paul Ham: History as Its Own Worst Enemy”, Flinders Journal of History and Politics 31 (2015): 3-14.

“Retrospective: Jonathan Brent and Vladimir P. Naumov’s Stalins Last Crime: The Plot against the Jewish Doctors, 1948-1953, Ten Years Later”, Flinders Journal of History and Politics 29 (2013): 2-7.  
 

Chapters

"Introduction: Hit Music, Disco Potential, Pop Kids." In Bodie A. Ashton (ed.) The Pet Shop Boys and the Political: Queerness, Culture, Identity and Society (London: Bloomsbury, 2024).

"He Dreamed of Machines: Queer Heritage and the Pet Shop Boys’ Turing Test." In Bodie A. Ashton (ed.) The Pet Shop Boys and the Political: Queerness, Culture, Identity and Society (London: Bloomsbury, 2024).

"It's (Not) Obvious: Queerness and Queer Identities Pre- and Post-Bilingual," with Carolin Isabel Steiner. In Bodie A. Ashton (ed.) The Pet Shop Boys and the Political: Queerness, Culture, Identity and Society (London: Bloomsbury, 2024).

"Trans* Körper als Frage der Staatssicherheit? Zwei Hamburger Fallstudien zur Verfolgung geschlechtsnonkonformer Menschen in der NS-Zeit." In Manuel Bolz, Fabian Röderer and Constanze Wallenstein (eds.) KörperZeiten: Narrative, Praktiken und Medien (Berlin: Reimer, 2024).

"Marginalisiert, unsichtbar? Der Kampf um die Anerkennung der vergessenen Opfer des 'Dritten Reiches.'" In Jürgen Zimmerer (ed.) Erinnerungskämpfe. Neues deutsches Geschichtsbewusstsein (Leipzig: Reclam, 2023).

"Introduction," with Amy Bonsall and Jonathan Hay. In Bodie A. Ashton, Amy Bonsall, and Jonathan Hay (eds.) Talking Bodies, vol. II: Bodily Languages, Selfhood and Transgression (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).
 

Reviews

“Michael Broers and Ambrogio A. Caiani (eds), A History of the European Restorations, vol. I: Governments, States and Monarchy (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), and Michael Broers, Ambrogio A. Caiani, and Stephen Bann (eds), A History of the European Restorations, vol. II: Culture, Society and Religion (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020)”, European History Quarterly 51, no. 4 (2021): 573-576.

“Wolfram Siemann, Metternich: Strategist and Visionary (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019)”, German History 39, no. 2 (2021): 302-303.

“Moritz von Brescius, German Science in the Age of Empire: Enterprise, Opportunity and the Schlagintweit Brothers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018)”, Journal of World History 32, no. 1 (2021): 173-176.

“Mark Cornwall and John Paul Newman (eds), Sacrifice and Rebirth: The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War (New York: Berghahn, 2016)”, European History Quarterly 50, no. 4 (2020): 716-18.

“Paul Fox, The Image of the Soldier in German Culture, 1871-1933 (London: Bloomsbury, 2018)”, European History Quarterly 50, no. 1 (2020): 152-4.    

“Anna Ross, Beyond the Barricades: Government and State-Building in Post- Revolutionary Prussia, 1848-1858 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019)”, European History Quarterly 49, no. 4 (2019): 713-15.

“A. Wess Mitchell, The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018)”, European History Quarterly 49, no. 3 (2019): 522-3.

“Benjamin Carter Hett, The Death of Democracy: Hitlers Rise to Power (London: William Heinemann, 2018)”, European History Quarterly 49, no. 2 (2019): 322-4.

“Laurence Cole, Military Culture and Popular Patriotism in Late Imperial Austria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)”, European History Quarterly 48, no. 3 (2018): 551-3.

“Sebastian Heer, Parlamentsmanagement: Herausbildungs- und Funktionsmuster parlamentarischer Steuerungsstrukturen in Deutschland vom Reichstag bis zum Bundestag (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2015)’, American Historical Review 123, no. 4 (2018): 1411-12.

“Susan Richter, Pflug und Steuerruder: Zur Verflechtung von Herrschaft und Landwirtschaft in der Aufklärung (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna: Böhlau, 2015)”, German Studies Review 40, no. 2 (2017): 411-13.      

“Brian E. Vick, The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014)’, German History 33, no. 2 (2015): 294-6.

“Barbara Eichner, Historys Mighty Sounds: Musical Constructions of German National Identity 1848-1914 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2012)”, German History 31, no. 4 (2013): 585-6.

“Sebastian Conrad, German Colonialism: A Short History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); and Christian S. Davis, Colonialism, Anti-Semitism, and Germans of Jewish Descent in Imperial Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012)”, The German Quarterly 85, no. 3 (2012): 368-70.