Gender & Violence. Power Dynamics and their Representations, 19th–21st Centuries
Organized by: German Historical Institute Rome; German Historical Institute Washington D.C.; Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte Hamburg; LWL-Institut für westfälische Regionalgeschichte Münster, I-00165 Rome (Italy)
20.05.2026 – 22.05.2026
Application deadline: 17.05.2026
https://dhi-roma.it/index.php?id=kalender
Aim of the conference is to develop a nuanced transnational periodisation of the significance of violence for gender hierarchies since the 19th century, whilst distinguishing between region-specific and overarching developments. The conference focuses on the question of the extent to which interpretations of certain behaviours as ‘violent’ or ‘non-violent’ have shaped gender hierarchies. Specifically, the conference examines whose experiences of violence were accorded (greater) legitimacy at which points in time – for example, through media coverage, by law enforcement agencies or in court, but also in individual interpretations and memories.
Femicide, sexualised violence in war zones, mass shootings, #MeToo: Questions regarding the links between gender and violence are not only a near-constant focus of the German media. Particularly with the rise of social media, debates on the interplay between gender and violence have come to shape the everyday life of the global community. However, the saturation of public discourse with gender-specific narratives regarding the legitimacy or illegitimacy of physical assaults is by no means, according to the basic premise of this conference, exclusively a contemporary phenomenon. Rather, it can be traced back at least to the 19th century and the spread of popular print media, as well as to the simultaneous rise in the significance of the human sciences in explaining deviant behaviour.
The focus is on the interpretation of certain behaviours as ‘violent’ or ‘non-violent’, the associated gender hierarchies, and the establishment of legitimacy – for example, through media coverage, by law enforcement agencies or in court, but also in individual interpretation and memory.
Furthermore, the conference examines whether and in what ways debates on violence and gender interacted with other categories of social inequality, particularly race, religion and class. The proposed conference addresses the long history of public negotiations on gender and violence and the associated power dynamics, and raises, not least, the question of what role those affected by violence themselves played in these negotiation processes. The thematic scope of the research includes, among other things, the history of the representation of intimate partner violence, the evolution of forensic theories, violence perpetrated by women in colonial contexts, and the memory and legal interpretation of sexual offences.
Conference schedule
May 20, 2026 Keynote
6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. Keynote: Mara Keire (University of Oxford, UK): „Meet the Swinger“: Sex, Violence, and Photography in the United States, 1965-1995
May 21, 2026 Conference Day I
9:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.: Arrival at the conference venue / Check-in
10:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.: Welcome and introduction (Petra Terhoeven, Raphael Rössel, Claudia Kemper, Daniel Gerster)
10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.: Panel I: Representing Intimate Partner Violence
Maren Röger (GWZO / University of Leipzig): Naturalization and Pathologization: (Media) Interpretations of Intimate Partner Violence in the Long Twentieth Century
Alberto Rizzeli (University of Padova): The Via Sistina Drama. Judging Male Violence Against Women in a late-19th Century Cause Célèbre
Julia Menges (University of Kassel): The Media Debate on Domestic Violence in West Germany and France in the 1970s
Chair: Raphael Rössel
12:30 – 12:15 p.m.: Break
12:45 – 1:45 p.m.: Panel II: Gendered Spaces – Gendered Violence?
Kristy Campbell (University of the Bundeswehr Munich): Gendered spaces of colonial violence: How the ‚intimate‘ sphere becomes a space of women’s violent agency in German Southwest Africa (1884-1915)
Emma Teworte (University of Oxford, UK): ‘She looked like a beaten dog’: Gender-based violence, the family, and abortion in 1930s-1950s Germany
Zhanna Popova (International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam): Class or Gender Interests First? Approaching gendered violence at the workplace
Chair: Hannah Ahlheim
1:45–2:45 p.m.: Lunch break
2:45–4:15 p.m.: Panel III: Politics and Activism: Public Negotiations of Gender and Violence
Elisabeth Kimmerle (ZZF Potsdam): Historicizing Femicide. Feminist Activism, Gender, and Violence in 1970s-80s West Germany
Amrei Kienle (University of Tübingen): Gender-specific negotiations of political violence and their representation in the media in West Germany and Austria (1945/49-1959)
Catherine Davies (University of Zurich): Feminist Movements and Crime Policy: Comparing the US, France, and (West) Germany, 1970s–1990s
Chair: Daniel Gerster
4:15–4:45 p.m.: Break
4:45–6:15 p.m.: Panel IV: Changing Legal Approaches to Gender and Violence
Lisa Hellriegel (University of Bremen): Gender on Trial: Rape in German Court Cases, 1920s–1950s Emilia Musumeci (University of Teramo): Impossible Violence: Forensic Medicine, Criminal Law, and the Myth of Anatomical Consent in Italy (19th–20th c.)
Sabina Mompó Toribio (Autonomous University of Barcelona): “That woman’s moral conduct is deplorable.” The punishment of female transgression through ordinary judicial proceedings for sexual violence (1936–1948)
Chair: Lars Döpking
May 22, 2026 Conference Day II
10:00 – 11:00 a.m.: Panel V: Male War, Female Peace? Gendered Violence within Military and Martial Contexts
Kim Bootsma / Henk de Jong (Netherlands Defense Academy, Breda): Female War Correspondents, Gender, and Representations of Wartime Violence (1944–1945)
Louise Earnshaw (University of Leeds): Behind the High Walls: Captivity, Endurance, and Gendered Narratives of Violence in First World War POW Testimonies
Chair: Claudia Kemper
11:00 – 11:15 a.m.: Break
11:15 a.m. – 12:45 p.m.: Panel VI: Harming which Bodies?
Kena Stüwe (Humboldt University Berlin): Of Body and of Structures – The Issue of Forced Pregnancies in the German Movement for Birth Regulation in the early 20th century
Eva Payne (University of Mississippi): Selling the Body? The relationship between commercial sex and violent sports in the 20th century United States
Paula Muhr (Brand University of Applied Sciences Hamburg / Technical University of Berlin): Gender and Violence in Medical Accounts of Hysteria and Functional Neurological Disorder, 19th–21st Centuries
Chair: Petra Terhoeven
12:45 – 1:45 p.m.: Lunch break
1:45 – 3:15 p.m.: Panel VII: Intersecting Forms of Violence
Anna Horstmann (Bielefeld University): Gendered Experiences of Violence of Children in Germany during the Second World War
Ellinor Schweighöfer (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main): “I don’t like Mondays.” Amok and the question of gender
Susan Grayzel (Utah State University): Reproduction at War: Pregnant Bodies & Spaces of Violence
Chair: Vera Grund
3:15–3:30 p.m.: Break
3:30–4:00 p.m.: Joint concluding discussion [Moderators: Raphael Rössel; Claudia Kemper]
4:00 p.m.: End of the conference