Class Description
In January 1931, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld made his second visit to Chicago to speak at the Dill Pickle Club. Hirschfeld hailed from Berlin, the city Mark Twain dubbed the “European Chicago,” where he founded the Institute for Sexual Science in 1919. Hirschfeld was the first modern advocate of homosexuality insofar as he believed that science was the path to justice. Hirschfeld’s Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, founded in 1897, was the first homosexual rights organization and inspired gay rights advocates like Henry Gerber, who founded the Society for Human Rights in Chicago in 1924, the first gay rights organization in the United States. In his 1910 book, Transvestites, Hirschfeld distinguished sexual orientation from gender identity, a key move in transgender history. His Institute performed the first trans surgeries in the 1920s. Focused on Chicago and Berlin in the early twentieth century, this course provides an historical understanding of today’s LGBTQ movement.
Pamela Caughie, Professor Emerita of Loyola University Chicago, is a modernist and gender scholar. Co-editor of the first comparative scholarly edition of Man into Woman, the life narrative of Lili Elbe, she also directs the Lili Elbe Digital Archive.
Materials List
Order from the Newberry Bookshop!
Required
- Robert Beachy, Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity. Vintage, 2014. ISBN: 978-0-307-47313-4
- Isherwood, Christopher, Goodbye to Berlin. New Directions, 2012. ISBN: 978-0-8112-2024-8
- Digital Course Packet
First Reading
Please read Beachy, Chapter 3, pp. 85-119
Cost and Registration
6 sessions, $268 ($241 for Newberry members, seniors, and students). Learn about becoming a member.
To register multiple people for this class, please go through the course calendar in Learning Stream, our registration platform. When you select the course and register, you’ll be prompted to add another registrant.
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