As part of the Humanities Center’s Fall 2025 speaker series on New Histories of Fascism, Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust, Dagmar Herzog (CUNY Graduate Center), a renowned historian of fascism, sexuality, disability, and modern Germany, will present her new book, The New Fascist Body (Wirklichkeit Books, 2025).

The success of new far-right movements cannot be explained by fear or rage alone – the pleasures of aggression and violence are just as essential. As such, racism is particularly intense when it is erotically charged, migration presenting as a sexual threat to white women being one of many examples. Germany’s strikingly successful right-wing political party Alternative für Deutschland is, according to the historian Dagmar Herzog, characterized by this “sexy racism”, with its second main feature being that of an obsessive anti-disability hostility – both elements resonating strongly with Nazism. In The New Fascist Body, Herzog connects her analysis of fascism’s libidinous energy with its animus against bodies perceived as imperfect. Only by studying the emotional and intellectual worlds of past fascisms can we understand and combat their current manifestations.

Lunch will be provided. This workshop is free and open to the public, but please RSVP to Jonathon Catlin (jcatlin4@ur.rochester.edu) for a head count.