This is the third in a series of posts dedicated to celebrating the 40th volume of our journal Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques.
The latest issue of Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques is devoted to the special topic of “War, Occupation, and Empire in France and Germany.” This post is the transcript of an electronic interview between the issue’s Guest Editor, Jean Elisabeth Pedersen, and one of the six contributors, Krista Molly O’Donnell.
This is the second in a series of posts dedicated to celebrating the 40th volume of our journal Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques.
The latest issue of Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques is devoted to the special topic of “War, Occupation, and Empire in France and Germany.” This post is the transcript of an electronic interview between the issue’s Guest Editor, Jean Elisabeth Pedersen, and one of the six contributors, Julia Roos.
Pedersen: What first drew you to the study of the “black horror” campaign?
Roos: My first book focuses on conflicts over prostitution reform during Germany’s Weimar Republic (1919-1933). It was in this context that I first came across the issue of the brothels for colonial French troops established in the occupied Rhineland during the 1920s. Middle-class German feminists and their conservative allies appealed to racialist fears and nationalist resentment over these brothels to discredit Germany’s own system of police-controlled prostitution. I realized that the protest against the brothels was an important facet of the broader propaganda campaign against France’s colonial occupation troops, which used the racist epithet, “black horror on the Rhine.” What fascinates me about the “black horror” campaign is the fresh light it sheds on the different ways in which World War I unsettled established racial stereotypes and hierarchies between whites/Europeans, on the one hand, and Africans and other colonized peoples, on the other hand. It also offers rich possibilities for exploring the legacies and postwar permutations of wartime propaganda discourses centered on women’s and children’s sexual victimization by racial “Others.”
Continue reading “Propaganda and Prostitution Reform During Germany’s Weimar Republic”
This is the first in a series of posts dedicated to celebrating the 40th volume of our journal Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques.
The latest issue of the journal is devoted to the special topic of “War, Occupation, and Empire in France and Germany.” This post is the transcript of an electronic interview between the issue’s Guest Editor, Jean Elisabeth Pedersen, and one of the six contributors, W. Brian Newsome.
Pedersen: What drew you to the study of Maxence Van der Meersch and his novel Invasion 14?
Newsome: Several years ago, I was conducting research on the Young Christian Workers and its adult offshoots. Specifically, I was interested in the theology of the Mystical Body of Christ and the ways in which chaplains and lay leaders in Catholic Action groups absorbed and acted upon principles associated this theological concept. My research led to “The Mystical Body of Christ: A Vector of Engagement for French Catholic Action, 1926-1949,” an article that appeared in Politics in Theology, part of Transaction Publishers’ series Religion and Public Life, ed. Gabriel Ricci 38 (June 2012): 147-172.
Continue reading “Discovering Van der Meersch: Themes of Race and Empire”
Most national days celebrate about what you would expect a national day to celebrate. Some, like the national days of the United States, Albania, and Haiti mark the signing of a declaration of independence from a colonial power. Other countries, like much of Africa, choose to remember the day the colonial power actually left. Countries like Germany and Italy celebrate unification. Others are a little quirkier, like Austria which celebrates its declaration of neutrality and Luxembourg which honors the Grand Duke’s birthday. A handful of countries such as the United Kingdom and Denmark have no national holiday. But few countries can top France for the sheer coolness of their national day which commemorates the day an angry mob stormed a prison. Continue reading “Happy Bastille Day- A Brief History of the Holiday and French Revolution Resources from Berghahn”