[Oct 6] Sharing the Postwar Moment: Gender, Sex, and Race in Occupied Japan and Germany after WWII

Date: October 6, 2026 (Tuesday)

Time: 4:00pm–6:00pm

Venue: CRT-4.36, 4/F., Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

Speaker: Dr. Robert Kramm | Department of History | University of Tuebingen

Moderator: Prof. Daniel Poch | Associate Professor | Japanese Studies Programme | HKU

Abstract:

In the middle of the twentieth century, Japan and Germany shared a history of military aggression and occupation—both first occupier than occupied. Numerous studies have addressed this co-eval historical experience, highlighting, among other things, global warfare and fascist cooperation as well as the fantasies of overcoming the modern during the interwar years. The shared experience of defeat and being occupied after WWII, however, has received much less attention. By focusing on gender relations and sexual encounters between occupiers and occupied, this talk links everyday experiences of occupied Japan and West Germany. It demonstrates that the postwar moment was a transimperial historical event, and discusses the possibilities of a shared history of occupied Japan and West Germany to help us better understand the entwinement and complexity of gender, sexuality, race and its history in the postwar period.

Speaker’s Bio:

Robert Kramm holds a doctoral degree in history from ETH Zurich and is currently Heisenberg-Professor in Modern History in the Department of History at the University of Tuebingen. Before moving to Tuebingen, he was a Freigeist-Fellow and principal investigator of the research project “Radical Utopian Communities” in the School of History at LMU Munich. From 2017 to 2019 he was a post-doctoral fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities and taught in the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong. His first book, Sanitized Sex: Regulating Prostitution, Venereal Disease, and Intimacy during the Occupation of Japan, 1945-1952, was published 2017 with University of California Press. His second book, Radical Utopian Communities: A Global History from the Margins, 1900-1950 is forthcoming with Duke University Press. He co-edited Global Anti-Vice Activism: Fighting Drinks, Drugs, and “Immorality” (Cambridge University Press, 2016), and his peer-reviewed articles appeared in the Journal of World History, Journal of Women’s History, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Modern Asian Studies, Historische Anthropologie, and the Journal of Global History.     

All are welcome, no registration is required.

For enquiries, please contact Prof. Daniel Poch at dpoch@hku.hk