UNT Special Collections 2023 Research Fellowship Awardee

Project Title

Hate Crimes: A Transatlantic History of Germany’s Violent ‘90s

Project Description

Dr. Ewing’s project asks how the concept of hate criminality became a useful way for activists, policy makers, and law enforcement to make sense of the surge in reported violence in the aftermath of German unification. Starting with queer and anti-racist violence prevention programs in the United States in the 1980s, this project traces the development and circulation of the concept of “hate crimes” across the Atlantic. In so doing, it argues that far from being a fixed term, hate criminality became a multivalent idea that would have unintended consequences for the politics of race on both sides of the Atlantic.

Biography

Christopher Ewing is an assistant professor of history at Purdue University. His book, The Color of Desire: The Queer Politics of Race in the Federal Republic of Germany after 1970, examines the entanglement of racism and antiracism in shaping queer German movements in the aftermath of gay liberation. He has published in The Journal of the History of Sexuality, Sexualities, and Sexuality & Culture and is currently co-editing a collection titled Reading Queer Media, under contract with Palgrave Macmillan.