Professor Heike Bauer — Birkbeck, University of London

Overview

Biography

Heike Bauer is Professor of Modern Literature and Cultural History. She teaches and supervises doctoral students on topics relating to gender and sexuality in fiction, history, culture and criticism since the nineteenth-century including projects that cut across conventional period and disciplinary boundaries.

She has published widely on literature and the modern history of sexuality, and on the rise of queer and feminist graphic novels. She is a steering group member of Birkbeck Interdisciplinary Gender and Sexuality Studies (BiGS), co-convenor of the History of Sexuality Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research and member of the editorial boards of Australian Feminist Studies and History of the Human Sciences.

Her research received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), the British Academy (UK), the Wellcome Trust (UK), the Leslie Centre for the Humanities at Dartmouth College (USA), the Cornelia Goethe Centrum at Goethe University Frankfurt (Germany), the Christina Institute at Helsinki University (Finland), William & Mary University (USA) and the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University (USA).

Highlights

Heike is currently working on a major new project on the modern invention of the dangerous dog.
She is co-editor, with Melina Pappademos, Katie Sutton and Jennifer Tucker, of 'The Visual Archives of Sex', Radical History Review 142 (2022).
Jewish Women's Comics: Borders and Bodies, co-edited by Heike Bauer, Andrea Greenbaum and Sarah Lightman, is forthcoming with Rutgers University Press in 2022.
Heike's latest monograph, The Hirschfeld Archives: Violence, Death, and Modern Queer Culture (2017), is available open access.

Qualifications

PhD, Birkbeck, University of London, 2004
MA , University of Wales, Aberystwyth, 1999

Web profiles

Twitter

ORCID

0000-0003-4067-9989

Research

Research interests

Modern history of sexuality
Gender and sexuality
Fiction (nineteenth-century to contemporary)
Comics and graphic memoirs
Animal Studies - dogs

Research overview

I have research interests in literature, sexology and the modern histories of gender and sexuality, animal studies, and contemporary LGBTQI+ writing and graphic memoirs. To date I have published five books, two special journal issues and over twenty articles and chapters in edited collections.

My most recent monograph is The Hirschfeld Archives: Violence, Death, and Modern Queer Culture (Temple University Press, 2017). It was funded by an AHRC Leadership Fellowship (you can read the AHRC feature on it here). The book examines little known and forgotten writings by Magnus Hirschfeld, the influential sexologist who is best known today for his homosexual activism, transgender work and founding of the world's first Institute of Sexual Science in 1919. It shows that violence had a significant impact on queer lives around 1900, but also reveals the gendered and racialized limits of the emerging homosexual rights movement in the West. Winner of a Knowledge Unlatched award, the book has been reviewed widely, for example in the THE, TSQ, Australian Feminist Studies, Gay & Lesbian Review, Journal of the History of Sexuality, and Gender and History. You can listen to a podcast about the book here. It is available open access as well as in print and electronic format.

Prior to this work I led a Wellcome Trust funded international symposium on the emergence of modern sexual debates in different contexts and parts of the world. The related interdisciplinary collection of essays I edited, Sexology and Translation: Scientific and Cultural Encounters Across the Modern World, 1860-1930 (Temple University Press, 2015), is the first study of the contemporaneous emergence of modern sexual debates in modern Europe, Asia, Peru and the Middle East. It has been reviewed widely including in the Journal of the History of Sexuality and Modernism/Modernity, and prompted a frank debate about methodology in History of the Human Sciences.

My other books include English Literary Sexology (2009), Queer 1950s (2012, with Matt Cook), and Women and Cross-Dressing in Britain, 1800-1939 (2006; eBook 2013). I have also published two special journal issues on contemporary comics and contempory sexual politics, ‘Transnational Lesbian Cultures’ (Journal of Lesbian Studies Vol. 18, No. 3, 2014. With Churnjeet Mahn) and ‘Autobiographical Comics by Jewish Women’ (Studies in Comics Vol. 6, No. 2, 2016. With Andrea Greenbaum and Sarah Lightman).

My main current project is a major new study of modern ideas about dangerous dogs. A short piece, 'Queer Dogs', on Radclyffe Hall, Una Troubridge and their dachshunds was published in Queer Objects (2019), edited by Chris Brickell and Judith Collard.

In addition, I am also working on a number of collaborative projects including a special issue, 'The Visual Archives of Sex', with Melina Pappademos, Katie Sutton & Jennifer Tucker for Radical History Review 142 (2022), and a book of critical articles, interviews and original artwork, Jewish Women's Comics: Borders and Bodies, which is co-edited with Andrea Greenbaum and Sarah Lightman for Rutgers University Press.

Research Centres and Institutes

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

I have supervised to completion a wide range of projects including those rooted in English Studies, broadly conceived, and those that cut across conventional disciplinary boundaries and/or work across different languages.

I welcome enquiries from potential doctoral students with interests in gender and sexuality, especially on topics relating to:

Literature and culture since the nineteenth-century
The history of sexuality / sexology / queer history
LGBTIQ+ literature and graphic memoirs
Archives
Translation & the cross-cultural travel of ideas
Animal studies

Please contact me (h.bauer@bbk.ac.uk) if you would like an informal discussion about your ideas for an MPhil/PhD.

Details on the application format and process can be found here.

Publications

Article

Bauer, Heike and Greenbaum, A. and Lightman, S. (2016) Introduction: autobiographical comics by Jewish women. Studies in Comics 6 (2), pp. 201-208. ISSN 2040-3232.
Bauer, Heike (2015) Tangles: an interview with Sarah Leavitt. Studies in Comics 6 (2), pp. 329-337. ISSN 2040-3232.
Bauer, Heike (2014) Vital lines drawn from books: difficult feelings in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Are You My Mother?. Journal of Lesbian Studies 18 (3), pp. 266-281. ISSN 1089-4160.
Bauer, Heike and Mahn, C. (2014) Introduction: transnational lesbian cultures. Journal of Lesbian Studies 18 (3), pp. 203-208. ISSN 1089-4160.
Bauer, Heike (2010) ‘Race’, normativity and the history of sexuality: Magnus Hirschfeld’s racism and the early-twentieth-century sexology. Psychology and Sexuality 1 (3), pp. 239-249. ISSN 1941-9899.
Bauer, Heike (2009) Theorizing female inversion: sexology, discipline and gender at the fin de siècle. Journal of the History of Sexuality 18 (1), pp. 84-102. ISSN 1043-4070.
Bauer, Heike (2003) "The Idea of Development": decadence, aestheticism and late-Victorian notions about sexual identity in Marius the Epicurean. Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies 9, pp. 1-15. ISSN 1327-8746.
Bauer, Heike (2003) "Not a translation but a mutilation": the limits of translation and the discipline of Sexology. The Yale Journal of Criticism 16 (2), pp. 381-405. ISSN 0893-5378.
Bauer, Heike (2003) Richard von Krafft-Ebing's "Psychopathia Sexualis" as sexual sourcebook for Radclyffe Hall's "The Well of Loneliness". Critical Survey 15 (3), pp. 23-38. ISSN 0011-1570.

Book

Bauer, Heike (2017) The Hirschfeld Archives: violence, death, and modern queer culture. Sexuality Studies. Philadelphia, U.S.: Temple University Press. ISBN 9781439914328.
Bauer, Heike, ed. (2015) Sexology and translation: cultural and scientific encounters across the modern world. Sexuality Studies. Philadelphia, U.S.: Temple University Press. ISBN 9781439912492.
Bauer, Heike and Cook, Matt Bauer, Heike and Cook, Matt, eds. (2012) Queer 1950s: rethinking sexuality in the postwar years. Genders and Sexualities in History. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230300699.
Bauer, Heike (2009) English literary sexology: translations of inversion, 1860-1930. Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230221635.
Bauer, Heike, ed. (2006) Women and cross-dressing: 1800-1939. History of Feminism. Oxford, UK: Routledge. ISBN 9780415323024.

Book Review

Bauer, Heike (2019) Veronika Fuechtner; Douglas E. Haynes; Ryan M. Jones (Editors). A Global History of Sexual Science, 1880–1960. xiii + 437 pp., notes, index. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017. $34.95 (paper). ISBN 9780520293397. (In Press)
Bauer, Heike (2019) Ralph M. Leck, Vita Sexualis: Karl Ulrichs and the Origins of Sexual Science.
Bauer, Heike (2019) Review of Not Straight from Germany: Sexual Publics and Sexual Citizenship since Magnus Hirschfeld (Michigan UP, 2017) ed. by Michael Thomas, Taylor, Annette Timm, and Rainer Herrn.. (In Press)
Bauer, Heike and Crozier, I. (2017) Sexology, historiography, citation, embodiment: a review and (frank) exchange.

Book Section

Bauer, Heike (2017) Constructions of desire. In: Craig, R. and Linge, I. (eds.) Biological Discourses: The Language of Science and Literature around 1900. Cultural History and Literary Imagination. Berlin, Germany: Peter Lang. ISBN 9781787077614.
Bauer, Heike (2017) Dracula and Sexology. In: Luckhurst, Roger (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Dracula. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 76-84. ISBN 9781316597217.
Bauer, Heike (2016) Staging untranslatability: Magnus Hischfeld encounters Philadelphia. In: Wiggin, B. and Macleod, C. (eds.) Un/Translatables: Across Germanic Languages and Cultures. Evanston, U.S.: Northwestern University Press. pp. 193-202. ISBN 9780810133440.
Bauer, Heike (2015) Comics, graphic narratives, and lesbian lives. In: Medd, J. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Lesbian Literature. The Cambridge Companions to Literature and Classics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 219-235. ISBN 9781107054004.
Bauer, Heike (2015) Introduction: translation and the global histories of sexuality. In: Bauer, Heike (ed.) Sexology and Translation: Cultural and Scientific Encounters Across the Modern World. Sexuality Studies. Philadelphia, U.S.: Temple University Press. pp. 1-14. ISBN 9781439912492.
Bauer, Heike (2015) Suicidal subjects: translation and the emotional foundations of Magnus Hirschfeld’s sexology. In: Bauer, Heike (ed.) Sexology and Translation: Cultural and Scientific Encounters Across the Modern World. Sexuality Studies. Philadelphia, U.S.: Temple University Press. pp. 233-252. ISBN 9781439912492.
Bauer, Heike (2015) Literary sexualities. In: Hillman, D. and Maude, U. (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to the Body in Literature. Cambridge Companions to Literature. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 101-115. ISBN 9781107644397.
Bauer, Heike (2014) Burning sexual subjects: books, homophobia and the Nazi destruction of the Institute of Sexual Sciences in Berlin. In: Partington, G. and Smyth, A. (eds.) Book Destruction from the Medieval to the Contemporary. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 17-33. ISBN 9781137367655.
Bauer, Heike (2013) Graphic Lesbian Continuum: Ilana Zeffren. In: Lightman, S. (ed.) Graphic Details: Jewish Women’s Confessional Comics in Essays and Interviews. Jefferson, U.S.: McFarland. pp. 98-109. ISBN 9780786465538.
Bauer, Heike (2012) Sexology backward: Hirschfeld, Kinsey and the reshaping of sex research in the 1950s. In: Bauer, Heike and Cook, Matt (eds.) Queer 1950s: Rethinking Sexuality in the Postwar Years. Genders and Sexualities in History. Basingstoke, Uk: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 133-149. ISBN 9780230300699.
Bauer, Heike and Cook, Matt (2012) Introduction: Queer 1950s: rethinking sexuality in the postwar years. In: Bauer, Heike and Cook, Matt (eds.) Queer 1950s: Rethinking Sexuality in the Postwar Years. Gender and Sexualities in History. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 1-10. ISBN 9780230300699.
Bauer, Heike (2012) Sexuality in Enlightenment popular culture. In: Peakman, J. (ed.) A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Enlightenment. The Cultural Histories Series. London, UK: Berg. pp. 159-183. ISBN 9781847888037.
Bauer, Heike (2011) Lesbian time. In: Giffney, N. and Sauer, M.S. and Watt, D. (eds.) The Lesbian Premodern. The New Middle Ages. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 161-169. ISBN 9780230616769.
Bauer, Heike (2008) Measurements of civilisation: non-western female sexuality and the fin de siècle social body. In: Cryle, P. and Forth, C.E. (eds.) Sexuality at the Fin de Siècle: The Making of a "Central Problem". Deleware, U.S.: Delaware University Press. pp. 93-108. ISBN 9781611491010.
Bauer, Heike (2006) Is there a history of female cross-dressing?. In: Bauer, Heike (ed.) Women and Cross-Dressing: 1800-1939. History of Feminism. London, UK: Routledge. pp. xiii-xxxvii. ISBN 9780415323024.
Bauer, Heike (2006) Scholars, scientists and sexual inverts: authority and sexology in Nineteenth-Century scientific thinking. In: Clifford, D. and Wadge, E. and Warwick, A. and Willis, M. (eds.) Repositioning Victorian Sciences: Shifting Centres in Nineteenth-Century Thinking. London, UK: Anthem Press. pp. 197-206. ISBN 9781843312123.

Business and community

Media

I am happy to receive enquiries from the media on the following topics:

History of sexuality / lesbian and gay history / transgender history
History of sexology
LGBTIQ+ literature and history
Graphic memoirs by women / queer and LGBTIQ+ comics
Magnus Hirschfeld

Outreach

I regularly share my research with a wide range of audiences.

I have, for example, published in the THE, contributed to the popular blog Notches: (re)marks on the history of sexuality, facilitated a workshop on anti-queer violence for humanities scholars and medical professionals, and given public lectures including in libraries such as the London Metropolitan Archives and museums such as the Schwules Museum* Berlin.