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Jews, Sexual Rights, and the Right

15. November 2019 17:00

Robert Tobin, Ph.D. (Henry J Leir Chair of Language, Literature and Culture, Clark University) will speak about the position of Jews and homosexuals in 19th-century Europe. Tobin has already analyzed literary, political, and scientific texts in his book “Peripheral Desires: The German Discovery of Sex” and thus showed that the modern categories of sexuality (e.g. heterosexuality and homosexuality) have their roots in the Enlightenment, Romanticism with its classical Greek tradition, and the Jewish emancipation movement. His lecture gives an insight into his current research which focuses more on human rights discourses and literary studies. The lecture is part of the conference “Jewish and Queer Interactions in Central Europe and Mandatory Palestine/Israel (1870-1960),” held by the Research Center Cultural History of Sexuality (Humboldt University of Berlin).