Julia Roos
- Assistant Professor (August 2006 to present) Department of History
Education
- M.A. in History and Sociology at University of Bremen, Germany, 1994
- M.A. in History at Carnegie Mellon University, 1995
- Ph.D. in History at Carnegie Mellon University, 2001
Contact Information
| Ballantine Hall, Rm. 715 |
| (812) 855-1682 |
Background
I am a historian of modern Europe with a special focus on twentieth-century Germany, gender, and sexuality. My forthcoming book on the history of prostitution in the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) explores how shifts in established gender relations and sexual mores after the First World War affected the stability of Germany’s first experiment in liberal-democratic government. Liberal gender reforms like the decriminalization of prostitution nourished a powerful right-wing backlash that played a major role in the destruction of Weimar democracy and the rise of National Socialism. From the example of Weimar, I have learned how important it is to integrate gender analysis into the study of politics and the state. In my research and teaching, I pay special attention to the relevance of conflicts over gender for larger processes of social, cultural, and political change. My current research focuses on the campaign against the “black horror on the Rhine,” a racist slogan against the stationing of French colonial soldiers from Africa in the German Rhineland after World War One.
Among the courses I have taught are surveys of German history from the Reformation to the present, as well as classes on women’s movements in modern Europe, the history of prostitution, and dictatorship in twentieth-century Europe.
Selected Awards
- 2002 Fritz Stern Prize for the best dissertation in the field of German history submitted at a North American university, The German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.
Research Interests
- Modern Germany; women and gender; sexuality; social/political/cultural
Courses Recently Taught
- B260: Women, Men, and Society in Modern Europe
- B377 & B378: History of Germany since 1648 I & II
- J300: Contemporary Germany
- J300: Gender History: The Case of the History of Prostitution
- J400: European Social Movements, circa 1850 to the Present
- H620 & H720: Twentieth-Century Europe
- H620: Modern Europe through the Lens of Gender
Publication Highlights
Books
Weimar’s Crisis through the Lens of Gender: The Case of Prostitution. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, forthcoming in 2010.
Articles
“Women’s Rights, Nationalist Anxiety, and the ‘Moral’ Agenda in the Early Weimar Republic: Revisiting the ‘Black Horror’ Campaign against France’s African Occupation Troops,” forthcoming in Central European History 42, no. 3 (September 2009).
“Backlash against Prostitutes’ Rights: Origins and Dynamics of Nazi Prostitution Policies,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11, nos. 1/2 (January/April 2002): 67-94. Reprinted in Dagmar Herzog, ed., Sexuality and German Fascism. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2005.
“Prostitutes, Civil Society, and the State in Weimar Germany,” in Frank Trentmann, ed., Paradoxes of Civil Society: New Perspectives on Modern German and British History. (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2000), 263-80.
