Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Gender as a Category of Knowledge

PhD Project:

Fighting While Hidden ? Eugen Wilhelm / Numa Praetorius, a Divided Intellectual (1866 – 1951)

Description of the Project

Eugen Wilhelm (1866 – 1951) from Strasbourg was an eclectic intellectual who left behind an important and substantial body of scholarly work ranging from law to sexology, and who as »Numa Praetorius« also left behind a legacy of political activism in the German gay-rights movement. My dissertation aims at analyzing Wilhelm´s multifaceted intellectual work by considering it in its historical context (the sociocultural latitude and restrictions that affected it) and connecting it with the complex layers of his (homo)sexual, national, and intellectual identity construction. The dissertation thus intends to trace back Wilhelm´s sinuous intellectual trajectory by analyzing him as a social actor embedded in his time. The sources consulted for this study (his diary and publications) are both situated at the intersection of knowledge production and reception, which allows me to focus on the productive interaction and tension between intellectual interventions and identity construction.

Particulars

Kevin Dubout studied from 2002 to 2008 history and political science at the Institut d´Etudes politiques in Paris and from 2008 to 2010 Editorial Studies at the Free University of Berlin, from 2012 to 2013 PhD student at the Research Training Group “Gender as a Category of Knowledge” (Humboldt University Berlin). Since 2011 member of the Magnus-Hirschfeld-Society in Berlin (Center for Research on the History of Sexual Science)

Selected Publications

»Eigentümliche Städte, sympathische Völker und Sehenswürdigkeiten von großer Schönheit«. Zur Skandinavien-Rundreise des WhK-Aktivisten Eugen Wilhelm 1901. In: Invertito. Jahrbuch für die Geschichte der Homosexualitäten 15 (2013, im Erscheinen).

Eugen Wilhelms Tagebücher. Editorische Probleme, Transkriptions- und Kommentarprobe. In: Officina editorica, hg. v. Jörg Jungmayr u. Marcus Schotte, Berlin 2011. S. 215–304.

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