Program Highlights:

1. Welcome by Dr. Sarah Bellows-Blakely

2. Lecture by Dr. Sébastien Tremblay:

• Dr. Tremblay will provide insights into his monograph on queer memory

culture of national socialism in the Euro-American world and the importance

of visual concepts for our understanding of global history.

3. Commentary by Prof. Dr. Martin Lücke:

• Prof. Dr. Lücke will offer a commentary on the book, setting the stage for an

open discussion.

4. Q&A Session:

• The floor will be open for questions, fostering intellectual exchange and

dialogue.

Hosts:

• The event is hosted by the Junior Research Group “Fixing the System in the Context

of the History of Science” and the Margherita von Brentano Zentrum for Gender

Studies at Freie Universität Berlin.

Refreshments:

• Following the lectures and discussions, we invite you to join us for a wine and cheese

reception at the same location. Non-alcoholic beverages will also be available.

• Weather permitting, a rooftop terrace with a scenic view of the campus will be

accessible.

Accessibility:

• The venue and the closest U-Bahn station (Dahlem-Dorf – U3) are wheelchair

accessible with a lift.

• All-gender bathrooms will be available near room throughout the duration of the

event.

• For more information on accessibility please write an email to sarah.bellowsblakely@

fu-berlin.de.

RSVP: Please confirm your attendance by until the 12th of February by contacting

PinkTriangleLegacies@gmail.com

Book Description: A Badge of Injury is a contribution to both the fields of queer and global

history. It analyses gay and lesbian transregional cultural communication networks from the

1970s to the 2000s, focusing on the importance of National Socialism, visual culture, and

memory in the queer Atlantic. Provincializing Euro-American queer history, it illustrates how

a history of concepts which encompasses the visual offers a greater depth of analysis of the

transfer of ideas across regions than texts alone would offer. It also underlines how gay and

lesbian history needs to be reframed under a queer lens and understood in a global

perspective. Following the journey of the Pink Triangle and its many iterations, A Badge of

Injury pinpoints the roles of cultural memory and power in the creation of gay and lesbian

transregional narratives of pride or the construction of the historical queer subject. Beyond a

success story, the book dives into some of the shortcomings of Euro-American queer history

and the power of the negative, writing an emancipatory yet critical story of the era.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111067711 

Dr. Sébastien Tremblay is lecturer in modern European History as well as affiliated

postdoctoral researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Studies of the Europa-

Universität Flensburg in Northern Germany, where he works since 2022 on German and North

American queer history in a transnational perspective, mobility, border studies, and European

integration from below. Prior to his position in Flensburg, Sébastien Tremblay was an IRC

Fellow at the interdisciplinary Excellence Cluster of the German Research Council “SCRIPT

contestations of the liberal script” in the research unit ‘Borders’ and was a visiting scholar at

the Centre for Queer History at Goldsmiths, University of London. He obtained his PhD in

2020 from the Graduate School of Global Intellectual History at Freie Universität Berlin.

Sébastien Tremblay has published many articles, blog posts, and book chapters in German,

English and French. In 2022 his article “Visual Collective Memories of National Socialism:

Transatlantic HIV/AIDS Activism and Discourses of Persecutions” was published in German

History.

https://www.uni-flensburg.de/geschichte/wer-wir-sind/personen/dr-sebastien-tremblay 

Dr. Sarah Bellows-Blakely is a historian of globalization, bureaucratization, East Africa, and

feminisms. She currently heads the junior research group, “Fixing the System: Analyses in

the Context of the History of Science,” at the Freie Universität Berlin. The research group is

hosted at the Margherita-von-Brentano-Center for Gender Studies and has affiliation with

Global History at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institute. It is funded by the Berlin University

Alliance. Before leading the junior research Group, Sarah Bellows-Blakely was a

postdoctoral research fellow at the DFG-funded Graduate School of Global Intellectual

History at the Freie Universität Berlin and at the International Research Center for Work and

the Human Life Cycle in Global History (re:work) at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. She

completed her graduate and undergraduate training in the United States, at Stanford

University and Washington University in St. Louis. Her current book, Girl Power: The Birth

of Girl-Focused Development from Nairobi is forthcoming with the University of Chicago

Press. Her recent articles have appeared in journals such as the American Historical Review

and Gender & History.

Prof. Dr. Martin Lücke is a historian and expert for history education. He completed his

doctorate on the history of male prostitution in Germany and has been Professor for history

education at Freie Universität Berlin since 2010. He is academic director of the Margherita

von Brentano Centre for Gender Studies at the FU since 2019. In the DFG research group

“Recht – Geschlecht – Kollektivität. Prozesse der Normierung, Kategorisierung und

Solidarisierung”, he heads the sub-project “Menschenrechte, queere Geschlechter und

Sexualitäten seit den 1970er Jahren”. Martin Lücke is also one of the co-coordinators (with

Benno Gammerl and Andrea Rottmann) of the DFG Network “Queere Zeitgeschichten im

deutschsprachigen Europa” and co-editor of the first of three planned handbooks on

contemporary queer history published by transcript Verlag.

The Margherita von Brentano Center for Gender Studies (MvBZ) is a central facility of

Freie Universität Berlin. The Center is the successor to the Central Institution for the

Promotion of Women's and Gender Studies, which was founded in 1981. With the

reestablishment under a new name in 2016, the focus of the work was defined in the

regulations of the institution. The main tasks of the MvBZ are to develop and implement

measures that support and network gender research anchored in the disciplines at Freie

Universität as well as interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary gender research cooperating in

joint projects (especially in an international context). In addition, it supports the development

of gender and diversity-related academic teaching and research projects in gender studies and

develops and implements its own research projects. The MvBZ offers students and

researchers within and outside Freie Universität the opportunity for academic exchange and

cooperation.