Event overview
Negotiating notions of transvestitism between Germany and Japan in the early 20th century
Exploring the global dimensions of sexology’s history, this talk focuses on Magnus Hirschfeld’s interpretation of the onnagata, male actors who played female parts in Japanese Kabuki theatre. Which role did the onnagata play within the emerging sexual category of the transvestite? How did intercultural contact and exchange motivate and influence the development of sexual-scientific concepts? The lecture answers these questions and concludes by reconstructing Hirschfeld’s personal encounters with onnagata in Japan in 1931.
Rainer Herrn is a researcher and lecturer at the Institute for the History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine at the Charité in Berlin, focusing on the history of psychiatry and sexology in particular. He has curated several exhibitions, including Sex Burns: Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science and the Book Burnings, shown at the Charité’s Museum for the History of Medicine in 2008, and, with Annette Timm and Michael Thomas Taylor, Trans Trans: Transgender Histories between Germany and the United States, 1882–1966, shown at the University of Calgary in 2017. His publications include a book about transvestitism and transsexuality in early twentieth-century Germany and, most recently, a reprint of the world’s first magazine for transvestites, Das 3. Geschlecht.
This event is free and open to the public but please book your place because there is limited space.
This event is generously supported by the German Academic Exchange Service.
Dates & times
Date | Time | Add to calendar |
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8 Mar 2018 | 5:00pm - 6:00pm |
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