Dr. Bodie Ashton

from 2021
Postdoctoral researcher at the Universität Erfurt on the VolkswagenStiftung Freigeist project “The Other Global Germany: Transnational Criminality and Deviant Globalization in the 20^th 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)

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

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).

Podcasts

• ‘Frederick the Great of Prussia, with Stephen Fry and Dr. Bodie Ashton’, You’re Dead To Me, BBC Sound (10 June 2022): <https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ccdc5q>.
   
• ‘Die binäre Erzählung — Transgeschlechtlichkeit (2/3)’, Our Voices, Our Choices, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (25 June 2021): <https://www.boell.de/de/media/podcast-episode-podigee/die-binaere-erzaehlung-transgeschlechtlichkeit-23-our-voices-our>.
   

Documentaries

• ZDF documentary Verbotene Liebe: Queere Opfer der NS-Diktatur (2024): <https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/zdfinfo-doku/verbotene-liebe-queere-opfer-der-ns-diktatur-100.html>.
   

Newspaper articles & blog posts

• Ashton, Bodie A. '"So Long as You Say I Lived As a Woman": Why Queer History Matters', De Gruyter Conversations (30 May 2023): <https://blog.degruyter.com/so-long-as-you-say-i-lived-as-a-woman-why-queer-history-matters/>.
   
• Ashton, Bodie A. ‘Coming Home and Coming Out? Germany, EURO 2020, and the Battle for Queer Rights’, De Gruyter Conversations (19 July 2021): <https://blog.degruyter.com/coming-home-and- coming-out-germany-euro-2020-and-the-battle-for-queer-rights/>.
   
• 'State of Nature: The Australian Federal Government would do well to remember some ideas from Western state philosophy, such as Bodin, Hobbes and Locke, especially when it comes to the responsibilities of a government', Digitales Forschungsmagazin, Universität Passau (17 January 2020): <https://www.digital.uni-passau.de/en/stories/2020/bushfire-crisis-in-australia/>.


• Ashton, Bodie A. ‘I’m Doing What the Australian Government Won’t — Telling the Truth about the Climate Crisis: Scott Morrison is dangerously downplaying the climate crisis – forcing people like me to tell the world the truth’, The Independent (7 January 2020): <https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/ australia-wildfires-latest-climate-crisis-scott-morrison-twitter-a9274026.html>.
   
• Ashton, Bodie A. ‘Australia is Burning: une perspective australienne’, Le Grand Continent (5 January 2020): <https://legrandcontinent.eu/fr/2020/01/05/australia-is-burning-une-perspective-australienne/>.
   
• Ashton, Bodie A. and Caroline Dodds Pennock. ‘Why We, As Academics, Created a Letter in Support of LGBT+ Rights: Our trans colleagues in higher education face constant fear of marginalisation. But many more of us support them. It’s time to confront the narrative’, The Independent (23 June 2019): <https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/transgender-lgbt-pride-letter-academics-transphobia-higher- education-a8971136.html>.
   
• Ashton, Bodie A. ‘The Past is not a Straight Line’, History Matters: History Brought Alive by the University of Sheffield (13 July 2017): <http://www.historymatters.group.shef.ac.uk/straight-line>.
   
• Ashton, Bodie A. ‘Stop Tinkering with School History, and Start Teaching It’, The Conversation (2 January 2014): <http://theconversation.com/stop-tinkering-with-school-history-and-start-teaching- it-21513>.
   

Panels

• Rechtsausschuss of the Bundestag (22 May 2023): <https://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2023/kw21-pa-recht-queere-opfer-948392>.
   
• Ashton, Bodie A., Anna Hájková, and Hannah Geiger. 'Kampf um Erinnerung: Verfolgung queerer Menschen im NS', Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes — Bund der Antifaschistinnen und Antifaschisten (29 November 2022): <https://youtu.be/swlvtwZPBmE>.
   
• ‘Transgender Experiences in Weimar and Nazi Germany, with Dr. Anna Hájkova, Dr. Katie Sutton, Dr. Bodie A. Ashton, and Rabbi Marisa Elana James’, Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust (2 June 2022): <https://mjhnyc.org/events/transgender-experiences-in-weimar-and-nazi-germany/>.
   

Interviews

• ‘Bodie Ashton on German nationhood, unexpected snails and the Pet Shop Boys’, A Bit Lit (28 April 2021): <https://abitlit.co/history/bodie-ashton-on-german-nationhood-unexpected-snails-and-the-pet- shop-boys/>.
   
• ‘Interview with Sabrina Mittermeier and Bodie Ashton’, The Object and its Story: Celebrating LGBT+ History Month, University of East Anglia (28 February 2021): <https://youtu.be/Gimt97eG8F8>.

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 Stalin’s 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: Hitler’s 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, History’s 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.