European History: Modern Europe, Modern Germany, History of Sexuality, Legal History, History of Democracy
Samuel Clowes Huneke is an award-winning historian of modern Europe, with a focus on the social and political history of twentieth-century Germany. He is broadly interested in how everyday life intersects with and shapes the relationships between citizens and states. His research foci include the history of gender and sexuality, legal history, and the history of dictatorship and democracy. Dr. Huneke received a B.A. summa cum laude in German and Mathematics from Amherst College, an M.Sc. with Distinction in Applicable Mathematics from the London School of Economics, and a Ph.D. in History from Stanford University.
His first book, States of Liberation: Gay Men between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany (University of Toronto Press, 2022), examines gay persecution and liberation in Germany during the Cold War. Tracing the experiences of gay men in East and West Germany, States of Liberation argues that simplistic, Cold-War-era understandings of an oppressive, communist East and a liberal, capitalist West fail to account for the complex and idiosyncratic ways that anti-gay animus as well as liberation efforts evolved in each country. States of Liberation won the Charles E. Smith Award for best book in European History from the European History Section of the Southern Historical Association.
He is also the author of A Queer Theory of the State, published by Floating Opera Press in October 2023 as part of its Critic’s Essay Series. The volume asks how queer theory can wed its critically anti-normative impulses to the empirical need for a state. In answering this question, it argues that the state is an integral component of a politics that seeks to subvert and undo the oppression of queer lives.
He is currently at work on two new books. The first is a history of lesbian women in Nazi Germany, about which he has published in Central European History and Journal of Contemporary History. The second is a new history of the Allied Occupation of Germany after World War Two, retelling the story of Germany’s denazification and democratization from the perspective of ordinary Germans.
He is also the Project Director of the East German Poster Database, a digital project funded by a Fenwick Fellowship from the George Mason University Libraries, which will make the University’s collection of seven thousand posters from the GDR available to researchers and students. He writes regularly for venues including Boston Review, The Point, and Los Angeles Review of Books.
States of Liberation: Gay Men between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany (University of Toronto Press, 2022)
Winner of the Charles E. Smith Award from the European History Section of the Southern Historical Association
A Queer Theory of the State (Floating Opera Press, 2023)
“A Queer Wall in the Head: Using Oral Histories to Map Gay Desire Across Cold War Germany,” German Studies Review (2022).
“Can Democracy Be Queer?: Male Homosexuality, Democratisation, and the Law in Postwar Germany,” Contemporary European History (2022).
“The Surveillance of Subcultures: Gay Spies, Everyday Life, and Cold War Intelligence in Divided Berlin,” Journal of Social History (2022).
“Heterogeneous Persecution: Lesbianism and the Nazi State,” Central European History 54.2 (2021): 297-325.
Sharon Abramson Research Grant, Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University, 2023
Residential Fellow, George Mason University Center for Humanities Research, Autumn 2022
Franklin Research Grant, American Philosophical Society, 2022
Faculty Fellow, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, 2021-2022
Fenwick Fellow, George Mason University, 2020-2021
Mabelle McLeod Lewis Fellow, 2019-2020
Silas Palmer Research Fellow, Hoover Institution Library & Archives, 2016
Graduate
Germany in the Cold War
Global History of Sexuality and Gender
Nazi Germany
Undergraduate
Modern German History
Germany after Nazism
Nazi Germany
PhD in History, Stanford University, 2019
MSc with Distinction in Applicable Mathematics, The London School of Economics and Political Science, 2012
AB summa cum laude in German and Mathematics, Amherst College, 2011
Queer Liberation in Cold War Germany. Amherst College. April 4, 2023.
Gay Espionage in Cold War Germany. The International Spy Museum. June 5, 2022.
Book Talk: States of Liberation. Hoover Institution Library and Archives. May 11, 2022.
Book Launch: States of Liberation. George Mason Center for Humanities Research. March 25, 2022.
"Queer Spaces in East Germany: Between Persecution and Liberation." Virtual webinar hosted by the Wende Museum as part of its series Cold War Spaces. June 17, 2020.
"Queer Conspiracies? Lesbians and Gay Men in Nazi Germany." Virtual talk hosted by Virginia Tech as part of the Americans and the Holocaust traveling exhibit. April 2, 2020.
“The Pendulum of Queer History,” The Baffler. 6 July 2023.
“Finding queer joy in the unlikeliest of places,” CNN Opinion. 13 June 2023.
“The Weimar Republic has a warning for the U.S. about its judges.” Washington Post. 28 October 2022.
“Hilary Mantel, Historian.” Boston Review. 7 October 2022.
“Toward a Queer Theory of the State.” The Point. 26 July 2022.
“Dangerous as the Plague.” The Baffler. 23 June 2022.
“History often has ignored the Nazis' persecution of these women.” CNN Opinion. 2 June 2022.
“Communist states have sometimes been havens for LGBTQ rights.” Washington Post. 22 March 2022.
“East Berlin Stories: Gay Espionage in Cold War Berlin.” The Baffler. 10 March 2022.
“The Beginnings of Queer Citizenship.” Boston Review. 23 February 2022.
“The problem with a U.S.-centric understanding of Pride and LGBTQ rights.” Washington Post. 4 June 2021.
“A Gay Turning Point that Failed to Turn? The Beethoven Hall Podium Discussion of 1980.” History | Sexuality | Law. December 30, 2020.
"Can we hold Trump and his allies accountable without further splitting America?" Washington Post. 16 November 2020.
"An End to Totalitarianism" Boston Review. 16 April 2020.
“What’s Wrong with Queer History?” Boston Review. 28 June 2019.
“Gay Liberation Behind the Iron Curtain” Boston Review. 18 April 2019.
“Queering the Vote” The Los Angeles Review of Books. 27 January 2019.
"Does Germany Hold the Key to Defeating Populism?" The Atlantic. 29 March 2017.
"Why Gay German Men Are Seeking Reparations for a Homophobic Nazi Law." VICE. 19 August 2016.
“The gay-suicide stereotype kills gay people, and must end.” Aeon. 16 February 2016.
"The Lost History of East Germany." Review of Katja Hoyer, Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany (New York: Basic Books, 2023). The New Republic. 22 September 2023.
“Critically Cringe.” Review of Susan Neiman, Left is Not Woke (Cambridge: Polity, 2023). Los Angeles Review of Books. 17 September 2023.
“Haunted by Queer Marxism.” Review of Petrus Liu, The Specter of Materialism: Queer Theory and Marxism in the Age of the Beijing Consensus (Durham: Duke University Press, 2023). Los Angeles Review of Books. 14 May 2023.
“Why Does the State Care About Your Gender?” Review of Paisley Currah, Sex Is As Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity (New York: NYU Press, 2022). Boston Review. 7 July 2022.
“The Slow Advance of LGBTQ Rights in Washington, D.C.” Review of James Kirchick, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington (New York: Henry Holt, 2022). The New Republic. 8 June 2022.
“All Hail the Appeasers.” Review of Munich: The Edge of War (dir. Christian Schwochow, 2021). Los Angeles Review of Books. 6 June 2022.
“A Politics of Stigma.” Review of Heather Love, Underdogs: Social Deviance and Queer Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021). Los Angeles Review of Books. 8 March 2022.
“The Queer Other: Queerness under the sign of conservative Islam.” Review of Evren Savcı, Queer in Translation: Sexual Politics under Neoliberal Islam (Duke University Press, 2021). The Baffler. 24 June 2021.
“‘Do Not Ask Me Who I Am’: Foucault and Neoliberalism.” Review of Mitchell Dean and Daniel Zamora, The Last Man Takes LSD: Foucault and the End of Revolution (Verso, 2021). The Point. 2 June 2021.
“Beyond Gay Imperialism.” Review of Mark Gevisser, The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020). The Baffler. 24 March 2021.
"Black Germans and the Politics of Diaspora." Review of Tiffany N. Florvil, Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement (University of Illinois Press, 2020). LA Review of Books. 25 February 2021.
“The Death of the Gay Bar.” Review of Jeremy Atherton Lin, Gay Bar: Why We Went Out (Little, Brown & Co., 2021). Boston Review. 18 February 2021.
"When Democracy Ails, Magic Thrives." Review of Monica Black, A Demon-Haunted Land: Witches, Wonder Doctors, and the Ghosts of the Past in Post-WWII Germany (Metropolitan Books, 2020). Boston Review. 29 October 2020.
“Seduced by Respectability.” Review of Javier Samper Vendrell, The Seduction of Youth: Print Culture and Homosexual Rights in Weimar Germany (Toronto University Press, 2020). The Point. 19 August 2020.
"Recovering Queer Identities.” Review of Jen Manion, Female Husbands: A Trans History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). Los Angeles Review of Books. 18 July 2020.
"The Long Fight for LGBT Labor Equality." Review of Eric Cervini, The Deviant's War: The Homosexual vs. The United States (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020). Boston Review. 17 June 2020.
“Cashing in on Queerness.” Review of David K. Johnson, Buying Gay: How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019). The Point. 20 February 2020.
“Atone—But Not Because it Will Save Democracy.” Review of Susan Neiman, Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2019). Boston Review, 16 December 2019.
“The Inadequacies of Justice.” Review of Mary Fulbrook, Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). The Los Angeles Review of Books, 21 July 2019.
“Was Socialism Sexy?” Review of Kristen R. Ghodsee, Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence (New York: Nation Books, 2018). The Point, 3 April 2019.
“What’s Left of the Gay Left?” Review of Martin Duberman, Has the Gay Movement Failed? (Berkeley: UC Press, 2018). The Point, 7 December 2018.
“Politics of Hate.” Review of Dan Healey, Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017). The Los Angeles Review of Books, 26 October 2018.
“Queer Theory, Pt. 1” on American Prestige, 10 June 2022.
Life Elsewhere: Interview about States of Liberation: Gay Men between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany
Versus History Podcast: Interview about States of Liberation: Gay Men between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany
An Interview with Samuel Clowes Huneke about his new book, "States of Liberation": Interview with the Center for Humanities Research at George Mason University
New Books Network: Podcast conversation about States of Liberation: Gay Men between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany
“Cruising Through Berlin’s Queer History,” Exberliner, 7 June 2021.