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WORK TITLE: Peripheral Desires
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PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://wordpress.clarku.edu/rtobin/
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http://www2.clarku.edu/faculty/facultybio.cfm?id=723 * http://wordpress.clarku.edu/rtobin/ * http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15448.html * http://www2.clarku.edu/departments/foreign/faculty/cvs/robert-tobin-cv.pdf
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Harvard College, A.B. (magna cum laude), 1983; Princeton University, M.A., 1987, Ph.D., 1990. Attended Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany, 1981-82, and Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg, Germany, 1986-88.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, graduate teaching assistant, 1985-89; Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA, instructor/assistant professor, 1989-94, associate professor, 1994-2002, professor, 2002-07, Cushing Eells Professor of the Humanities, 2007; Clark University, Worcester, MA, Henry J. Leir Chair, 2008—. Chair of academic departments, including Foreign Languages and Literatures department, Whitman College, 1996-99, and Arts and Humanities, Whitman College, 2005-08; associate dean of faculty, Whitman College, 2000-04.
MEMBER:Modern Language Association (delegate, 1998-2000, 2004-06, 2012-15), Modern Language Association Eighteenth- and Early-Nineteenth-Century German Literature Division (executive committee, 2004-2008), Critical Issues: Sex and Sexuality (steering committee, 2004-08), Modern Language Association GL/Q Caucus Crompton-Noll Committee (chair, 2005-07, second vice president, 2007, vice president, 2008, president, 2009), Blue Mountain Heart to Heart (1992-97, 2005-08, president, 1995, 2007), Governor’s Task Force on Human Rights (1993), Modern Language Association GL/Q Caucus (2007-2008, president, 2009), Clark University Freud Centennial planning committee (2008-2009), Clark University task force on undergraduate education (2008-09), Clark University Spanish Department Chair and professor search committee (2009-10, 2010-11), Clark University review of department chair committee (2011), Clark University planning and budget review committee (2010-13), Clark University research board (2011-13), Clark University Mellon planning group (2011), Clark University Higgins School Director search committee (2012), Clark University Mellon advisory committee (2014—), Clark University committee on personnel (2014—, chair, 2015-16), Clark University Screen Studies assistant professor search committee (2014).
AWARDS:Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst fellow, 1987; Whitman College Garrett fellow, 1996; George Ball Award, Whitman College, 1998; Fulbright Senior Scholar Partial Support Award, Freie Universität, 2000; Columbia University Rockefeller fellow, 2004; Edwards Award, Whitman College, 2008; Fulbright Freud Visiting Scholar, University of Vienna and Sigmund Freud Museum, 2013.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Philosophy and Literature, Psychoanalysis and History, Monatshefte, Forum: Homosexualität und Literatur, and Psychiatric News. Also contributor to books, including Gay Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia, The Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature, The Routledge Encyclopedia of Postmodernism, The Making of the Humanities, Volume III: The Modern Humanities, and Impure Reason: Dialectic of Enlightenment in Germany. Translator of Outing Goethe and His Age and One Hundred Years of Masochism: Literary Texts, Social and Cultural Contexts.
SIDELIGHTS
As a professor at Clark University, Robert Deam Tobin’s main expertise lies in gender and literature, among other related subjects. Prior to his professorship, Tobin earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard, graduating magna cum laude. During his time there, he traveled to Germany to join the Munich-based Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität as an exchange student. He then pursued and obtained his master’s and doctoral degrees from Princeton, in the process traveling to Freiburg to attend Albert-Ludwigs-Universität.
Tobin held employment at two other universities before working with Clark University. He spent his initial career years with Whitman College, where he went on to be elected as Cushing Eells Professor of the Humanities. Under Clark University’s comparative literature department, he is the Henry J. Leir Chair. Tobin has garnered several other honors throughout his career, including Whitman College’s George Ball award, a Fulbright scholarship, and a Rockefeller fellowship. He has also participated in a myriad of organizations, such as Blue Mountain Heart to Heart and various Modern Language Association divisions.
Peripheral Desires: The German Discovery of Sex is one of many works penned by Tobin throughout his involvement with academia. The book serves as a timeline of German homosexuality and the attempts of German scholars to learn how to approach the concept from an academic standpoint. Tobin analyzes several works by an assortment of authors from his chosen time period, which spans from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. His main foci are Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal, Karl-Maria Kertbeny, and Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. Each of the authors Tobin covers within his book devised different theories and terminologies to address homosexuality based upon their distinct professional backgrounds, in turn leading the way to the examination of several other sociopolitical phenomena from the period. Tobin also uncovers similarities in the way these writers view homosexuality and attempt to explain it.
In the process of analyzing German homosexuality, Tobin also broaches the subjects of gender politics, territorial expansion, and religion. Medicine comes into play as well, as several authors approach the subject of homosexuality with a more clinical lens and debate whether this tactic is viable. All of these aspects come to influence how the writers and works investigated in Peripheral Desires approach homosexuality. The most important element of Tobin’s analysis, however, is language. He places special emphasis on the words used to describe homosexuality and other forms of sexual expression.
Scholarly writings are not the only works Tobin examines. He also takes a glimpse at how homosexuality is portrayed in fiction from the early nineteenth century and beyond, drawing from literature written by Otto Julius Bierbaum, Adalbert Stifters, and more. Tobin explains that the work of the scholars he analyzes ultimately informs the work of fiction authors from the period in one way or another. He also addresses how the attitudes expressed in the 19th century still inform how we approach homosexuality within contemporary times.
Helmut Puff, a reviewer in Philological Quarterly commented: “[T]his study recommends itself through concise descriptions, probing arguments, and refreshing frames of understanding bound to enlighten general readers interested in sexual modernity as well as specialists in the German literary traditions.” He added: “Tobin thus fuels one’s desire to uncover more about the pioneering texts and elucidating contexts that make The German Discovery of Sex such a compelling read.” In an issue of Choice, E. Wickensham remarked: “[T]his well-researched volume with a complete, competent scholarly apparatus will interest a broad audience.” John Lauritsen, a contributor to The Gay & Lesbian Worldwide Review, expressed that Peripheral Desires presented “a new approach” to its chosen subject.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, April, 2016, E. Wickensham, review of Peripheral Desires: The German Discovery of Sex, p. 1171.
Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, July-August, 2016, John Lauritsen, review of Peripheral Desires, p. 16.
Philological Quarterly, spring, 2016, Helmut Puff, review of Peripheral Desires, p. 307.
ONLINE
Clark University, http://www2.clarku.edu/ (April 5, 2017), author profile.
Robert Deam Tobin, http://wordpress.clarku.edu/rtobin (April 5, 2017).
6WORK WITH JOURNALISTSInterview with journalists from the Travel Chanel program, "Monumental Mysteries," about the Freud statue, summer 2014, to be aired July 2015.Quoted by Frances Robinson, “Sweden Feels the ‘Euphoria’ of Another Eurovision Crown,” The Wall Street Journal, May 27, 2012.Quoted by Frances Robinson, “Azerbaijan Wins Eurovision,” The Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2011.Quoted by Frances Robinson, “Western Europe Seeks Eurovision Comeback,” The Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2011.Quoted by Daniel Michaels, “Scholars Sing the Praises of Eurovision,” The WallStreet Journal, March 15, 2011.Interview on Freud Centennial for Psychiatric News44.17 (September 14, 2009), p. 4.Interview on Freud Centennial with Ross Reynolds of KUOW (Seattle Public Radio), for “The Conversation” (September 4, 2009).REVIEWSPsychoanalysis, Monotheism and Morality: The Sigmund Freud Museum Symposia, 2009-2011. Forthcoming in The Journal of Cultural and Religious Theory.W. Daniel Wilson, Goethe, Männer, Knaben: Ansichten zur 'Homosexualität', in The Goethe Yearbook22 (2015): 280-84.-Mary Lindemann, Liaisons dangereuses: Sex, Law, and Diplomacy in the Age of Frederick the Great, in Journal of the History of Sexuality20.3 (September 2011): 649-52.Kai Marcel Sicks, Stadionromanzen: Der Sportroman der Weimarer Republik, in Monatshefte102. 2 (Summer 2010): 253-55.Todd Samuel Presner, Mobile Modernity: Germans, Jews, Trains, in German Politics and Society27.1 (Spring 2009): 67-70Kim Toffoletti, Cyborgs and Barbie Dolls: Feminism, Popular Culture and the Posthuman Body, American Book Review30.2 (January/February 2009): Simon Richter, Missing the Breast: Gender, Fantasy and the Body in German Enlightenment, in Monatshefte100.2 (Summer 2008): 291-93.David S. Luft, Eros and Inwardness in Vienna: Weininger, Musil, Doderer, inJournal of the History of Sexuality15.1 (January 2006): 143-46.Lee Wallace, Sexual Encounters: Pacific Texts, Modern Sexualities, H-Net (July 2004).
7“Six Feet Under,” in Film and History32.1 (2002) 87-88.“Queer as Folk,” in Film and History31.2 (2001) 75-77.Harry Oosterhuis, Stepchildren of Nature: Krafft-Ebing, Psychiatry, and the Making of Sexual Identity, in the Newsletter of the American Historical Association—Committee on Gay and Lesbian History 15.2 (Winter 2001).Theodore Ziolkowski, The Sin of Knowledge: Ancient Themes and Modern Variations, in Philosophy and Literature25.2 (October 2001) 347-50.Harald Weilnböck, "Was die Wange röthet, kann nicht übel seyn": Die Beziehungsanalyse der Entfremdung bei Hölderlin und Heidegger, in Germanic Review76.3 (Summer 2001) 267-71.Catriona MacLeod, Embodying Ambiguity: Androgyny and Aesthetics from Winckelmann to Keller, in Germanic Review75.4 (Fall 2000) 317-20.Review of "The Future of the Queer Past: A Transnational History Conference," in the GLSG Newsletter(of the American Musicological Society) 10.2 (Fall 2000) 7-8.Gerta Beaucamp, Johann Christian Polycarp Erxleben. Versuch einer Biographie und Bibliographie, in Lessing Yearbook 31(1999) 176-77.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Erotic Poems, trans. David Luke, with introduction by Hans Rudolf Vaget, in Goethe Yearbook9 (1999) 409-13.A Companion to Thomas Mann's "Magic Mountain", ed. Stephen Dowden, in Choice(November 1999).Norman Page, Auden and Isherwood: the Berlin Years, in Choice(April 1999).Anthony Heilbut, Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature, in the Lesbian and Gay Studies Newsletter23.1-2 (Spring/Summer 1998) 55-56.James McGlathery, E.T.A. Hoffmann, in Choice35.8 (April 1998).Anthropology and the German Enlightenment: Perspectives on Humanity, ed. Katherine Faull, in German Quarterly70.1 (Winter 1997) 68-69.Helmut Fuhrmann, Der androgyne Mensch: “Bild” und “Gestalt” der Frau und des Mannes im Werk Goethes, in Monatshefte89.3 (Fall 1997) 402-404.Ulf-Michael Schneider, Propheten der Goethezeit: Sprache, Literatur und Wirkung der Inspirierten, in Lessing Yearbook28 (1996) 326-27.Kazuo Ishiguro, The Unconsoled, in Whitman College Alumni Magazine (1996)George Mosse, The Image of Man, in the Lesbian and Gay Studies Newsletter23.3 (Fall 1996) 26-27.Gail Hart, Tragedy in Paradise: Family and Gender Politics in German Bourgeois Tragedy, in Choice34.2 (October 1996).Holger Rudloff, Pelzdamen: Weiblichkeitsbilder bei Thomas Mann und Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, in Monatshefte88.2 (Summer 1996) 258-59. Irmgard Wagner, Critical Approaches to Goethe’s Classical Dramas: “Iphigenie,” “Torquato Tasso,” and “Die natürliche Tochter”, in Choice(May 1996).
8Lawrence D. Mass, Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite: Being Gay and Jewish in America, in GLSG Newsletter(of the American Musicological Society) 6.1 (March 1996). (With Ivan Raykoff.)Nietzsche and the Feminine, ed. by Peter Burgard, in German Studies Review18.2 (1995) 332-33. Dorothy M. Figueira, The Exotic: A Decadent Quest, in Monatshefte87.4 (Winter 1995) 480-81.Benjamin Bennett, Beyond Theory: Eighteenth-Century German Literature and the Poetics of Irony, in Germanic Review70.1 (Winter 1995) 35.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Theatrical Calling, trans. John R. Russell, in Choice33.2 (October, 1995).Rainer Baasner, Lichtenberg: Das Große Ganze. Ein Essay, in Lessing Yearbook26 (1994) 179-80.Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman, ed. James Hardin, in Seminar(1994) 326-28.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Erotische Gedichte. Gedichte, Skizzen und Fragmente, ed. Andreas Ammer, in Goethe Yearbook7 (1994) 254-56.Robert C. Holub, Crossing Borders: Reception Theory, Poststructuralism, Deconstruction, in Philosophy and Literature18.2 (October 1994) 397-98.Laurence A. Rickels, The Case of California, in Philosophy and Literature18.2 (October 1994) 395-96.JohnBoswell, Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, in Stonewall News Spokane(Sept. 1994) 9.Avital Ronell, Crack Wars: Literature--Addiction--Mania, in Philosophy and Literature18.1 (April 1994) 174-75.Paul Derks, Die Schande der heiligen Päderastie: Homosexualität und Öffentlichkeit in der deutschen Literatur 1750-1850, in Monatshefte85.1 (Spring 1993) 92-93.The Languages of Psyche: Mind and Body in Enlightenment Thought, ed. G.S.Rousseau, in Philosophy and Literature16.1 (April 1992) 186-87.Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, The Epistemology of the Closet, in Philosophy and Literature15.2 (October 1991) 332-333.Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, in Philosophy and Literature15.1 (April 1991) 149-50.TALKS"Translating Freud's Austria-Hungary." MLA, Dallas, TX, January 2016."Vater-Sohn Liebe bei Freud und Soseki." Internationale Vereinigung für Germanistik, Tongji University, Shanghai, China, August, 2015."Colonial Sex Crimes: Law and Medicine, Race and Sexuality." Interdisciplinary Global Studies Program, Worceser Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, April 2015.
9Discussant on panel, “Writing Global Histories of Gay and Lesbian Literature: Problems and Possibilities.” MLA, Vancouver, BC, January 2015.“Freud and the Language of the Unconscious.” MLA, Chicago, January 2014.“Freud and Human Rights.” MLA, Chicago, January 2014.Participation in the international exploratory workshop, “Complex Relations: Mobility and Human Rights Regimes.” Franklin College, Sorengo, Switzerland, November 2013. “Sodomy in the Southwest: Sexuality, Law and Medicine in Germany and its Colonies.” GSA, Denver, October 2013.“Sexology in the Southwest: Medical Opinions on a Sodomy Case in the German Colonies.” Invited lecture, Towards a Global History of Sexual Science: 1880-1950,Leslie Center Humanities Institute, Dartmouth College, August 2013.“Die Darstellung der Sodomie in den Kolonien:Recht, Medizin und das Selbst.” Crimes of Passion, Münster, July 2013.“Freud and Sexual Rights.” International Comparative Literature Association, Paris, July 2013.“Die Entdeckung der Sexualität in Österreich-Ungarn: Kertbeny, Stifter und Musil.”Invited lecture, University of Vienna, June 2013.“Freud und die Menschenrechte.” Sigmund Freud Museum, Vienna, June 2013.“Ivan Zulueta’s Parody of Eurovision in Un, Dos, Tres(1969):Toward a History of the Politics of Camp.” A Transnational Vision for Europe: Performance, Politics and Places of the Eurovision Song Contest, Malmö, Sweden, May, 2013.“Sexuality and Textuality: Michael Cunningham’s By Nightfalland Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding.” Invited lecture, University of Graz, March 2013.“Discovering Sexuality: Medicine, Law and the Humanities.” The Making of the HumanitiesIII: The Making of the Modern Humanities, Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome, November 2012.“Fixing Freud: The Oedipus Complex in Contemporary American Literature."MLA, San Francisco, CA, January 2011.“From Time Travel to Detective Fiction: Freud inContemporary US Literature." Invited lecture, conference on Freud and Twentieth Century Culture, Princeton, NJ, December 2010.“Queering Thomas Mann."GSA, Oakland, CA, October 2010.“Sex, Law and Religion: Karl Heinrich Ulrich’s Urning Rights."GSA, Washington, DC, October 2009.“Faust: From Marlowe to Havel." Invited lecture, Eugene Lang College, The New School University, New York City, February 2008.“Sexologists and the Homosexual Emancipation Movement in Germany." Invited lecture, Eugene Lang College, The New School University, New York City, November 2007.“The Personal and the Pedagogical: Teaching ‘The German Discovery of Sex.’” AATG/ACTFL, San Antonio, November 2007.
10“Early Nineteenth-Century Sexual Radicalism: Heinrich Hössli and the Liberals of his Day.” German Studies Association, San Diego, October 2007.“Sexual Rights as Human Rights in the German Homosexual Emancipation Tradition."The Makings of Masculinity in Modern Germany, University of Wisconsin, Madison, April 2007.“ProductiveControversy in Goethe Scholarship—Past, Present, and Future.” MLA, Washington, DC, December 2005.“Sexuality and Human Rights in 19th-Century German Texts.” Northwest German Studies Colloquium, Seattle, October 2005.“Eurovision at 50: Post-Wall and Post-Stonewall.” Making Music, Making Meaning, International Association for the Study of Popular Music, Rome, July 2005.“’Like the Jew Raised in Germany’: Nineteenth-Century Theories on Sexual and National Identity.” University Seminar Lecture, Columbia University, April 2005.“Queer in Germany: Translating Neologisms in a Global Era.” Queer Keywords, Dublin, April, 2005.“Separated at Birth: Homosexuality and Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century Germany.” Invited lecture, Bucknell University, April 2005.“Natural Sex, Natural Rights."Science, Sexuality and Rights, Columbia University, NYC, March 2005.“Kertbeny, Homosexuality, and the Liberal Nationalist Cause in Austria-Hungary."Exploring Critical Issues: Sex and Sexuality, Salzburg, October 2004“Nietzschean Notions of Masculinity andthe Homosexual Rights Movement.” MLA, San Diego, December 2003.“The Legacy of Romanticism in the Homosexual Emancipation Movement.” Queer Romanticisms, University of Dublin, Ireland, August, 2003.“Youth Quake: Elisar von Kupffer and the Cult of Youth.” Invited lecture at Washington University, St. Louis, November, 2002.“Emancipated Women and the Third Sex: Ernst von Wolzogen’s Das dritte Geschlecht.” Invited lecture at Washington University, St. Louis, November, 2002.“Intertwining Identities: Same-Sex Desire and Jewishness in 19th-century Germany." Invited lecture at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, March, 2002.“Pederasty in Palestine: Arnold Zweig on Nationality and Sexuality.” Invited lecture at “The State of Sex in German Studies,” UCLA, February, 2002.“German Identity and Globalization in Thomas Mann’s Reflections of an Apolitical Man.” MLA, New Orleans, December, 2001.“‘Virile’ Greek Love: Classicism, Friendship, and Aesthetics.” Invited lecture, Queer Men: Historicizing Queer Masculinities, 1550-1800,University of Dublin, Ireland, July 2001."Camping the Flag." PAMLA. UCLA, November 2000.""Germans, Jews and Samoans: Majoritizing and Minoritizing Forms of Sexual Identity in the Late 19thCentury." Chicago, September 2000.
11"Judentum und Homosexualität in deutschen Diskursen des 19. Jahrhunderts." Invited lecture,Freie Universität Berlin, June 2000."Sexualität und Nationalität in deutschen Filmen." Invited lecture, Humboldt Universität Berlin, June 2000."Samoa in der deutschenKolonialzeit." Invited lecture, Humboldt Universität Berlin, May 2000."Homosexuelle Utopien in deutschem Film." 10thSiegener Kolloquium Homosexualität und Literatur, October, 1999."Queering Gender." Invited lecture, 50 Years of The Federal Republic of Germany: Through a Gendered Lens,UNC, Chapel Hill, September 1999.Presenter at a Preparing Future Faculty symposium at the University of Washington, Seattle, February, 1999.“Queer in Germany.” MLA, San Francisco, December, 1998.“Murder and Mayhem! Heinrich Zschokke and the Birth of the Modern Male Homosexual.” MLA, San Francisco, December, 1998.“Making Music: The Piano as Technology of Desire in German Literature from Goethe to Thomas Mann” College Musicological Society, San Juan, Puerto Rico, October, 1998.“Freundschaftsdämmerung: Johannes von Müller, Sigismund Wiese und Heinrich Hößli.” 8. Siegener Kolloquium Homosexualität und Literatur, October, 1997.“Fags and Flags: Sexualität und Nationalität inder amerikanischen Schwulenbewegung.” Rosa von Praunheim’s series, Homo 2000, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, June, 1997.“Körper und Kritik. Das neue Interesse der Literaturwissenschaft an der Sexualität. Exkurs: Thomas Mann.” Invited lecture in Frank Hörnigk’s “Literaturkritik in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” Humboldt Universität, June, 1997.“Das Ich im Anderen.” Invited lecture, Humboldt Universität, May, 1997.“Sacher-Masoch’s Goetheism.” MLA, Washington, December, 1996.“The Development of a GaySubculture in 18th-Century Germany: Fact and Fiction."NEMLA, Montreal, QB, April, 1996.“Aesthetic Pathologies: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch." RMMLA, Spokane, WA, October, 1995.“Subjectivity in Literature and Criticism: Lichtenberg and Jean Paul.” Invited lecture, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, May, 1995.“Performing Gender: Goethe on ItalianTransvestites." WSECS, University of California, Irvine, CA, February 1995.“Jean Paul in Tahiti: Oriental Homosexualities.” MLA, San Diego, CA, December, 1994.“Oriental Homosexualities: From Jean Paul to RuPaul.” 6th North American Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Studies Conference, Iowa City, IA, November 1994.
12“In and Against Nature: Goethe on Homosexuality and Heterotextuality.” MLA, NYC, NY, December, 1992.“Mephisto’s Medicine against Faust’s Melancholy Hypochondria.” MWASECS, Toledo, OH, October, 1992.“Ganymede and Prometheus in Faust.” Interpreting Goethe’s FaustToday, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA August, 1992.“Ganymede, Prometheus, Faust.” Invited lecture, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, February, 1992.“Sickness and Concentration Camps in the Closet: Thomas Mann and Gay Literary Studies.” Lesbian and Gay Studies Conference, New Brunswick, NJ, November, 1991.“Healthy Families: Medicine, Patriarchy, and Heterosexuality in 18th-Century German Novels.” Dialectic of Enlightenment and the Age of Enlightenment,University of California, Berkeley,October, 1991.“Healing the Homosexual Wound: Medicine and Literature in 18th-Century German Culture.” NEMLA, Hartford, CN, April, 1991.“Medicinalization of Androgyny in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.” Semiotic Society of America, Norman, OK, October, 1990.NATIONAL PANELAND CONFERENCE ORGANIZATIONOrganized and chaired “Annette von Droste-Hülshoff: Signifying Gender,” MLA, San Diego, 1994.Chaired “Teutonic Sexualities,” Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Studies Conference, Iowa City, 1994.Organized and chaired “Goethe’s Masochism,” MLA, Washington, 1996.Organized and chaired “Queer Romanticism,” North American Society for Study of Romanticism, Hamilton, 1997.Respondent on panel at conference called “The German Discovery of Race,” at Harvard, May 2001.Chair of panel called “Deconstructing Heterosexuality” at “Heterosexuality and its Discontents” at Columbia University, October, 2004Chair of panel called “Gay Sexualities” at conference on Sex and Sexuality, Salzburg, October 2004.Co-organized and chaired “Performing Gender on the Margins of Europe,” MLA, Philadelphia, 2004.Chair of panel on 18th-and early 19th-century German Literature, MLA, Philadelphia, 2004 Respondent on panel called “’Und das ist auch gut so’: LGBT/Queer Studies and Contemporary German Culture,” GSA, Milwaukee, October, 2005Chair of panel on German literature of the 18thand 19thcenturies, MLA, Washington, DC, 2005.Chair of panel on German literature of the 18thand 19thcenturies, MLA, Philadelphia, 2006.Lead organizer of panels on “Terror and Human Rights” for the committee on 18th-and early 19th-century German literature, MLA, Chicago, 2007.Chair of panel on 18th-and early 19th-century German Literature, MLA, San Francisco, 2008.Organized and chaired panel, “Sexology, Emancipation and Literature,” NeMLA, Boston, 2009Organized and chaired panel for GL/Q, “Reading, Writing and Teaching Queer Literary Relationships,” MLA, Philadelphia, 2009.Organized and moderated panel, “Freud as Fictional Character,” Austrian Cultural Forum, Jan 2010.Moderated talk by Robert Kramer, “Female Sexuality, Birth and Otto Rank: Freud’s Greatest Trauma,” Sigmund-Freud-Museum, Vienna, June 2013 Organized and convened three-day seminar on Sexual Pathologies atthe GSA, September 2014.
13LEIR CHAIR PROGRAMMING AT CLARK UNIVERSITYAND IN WORCESTERJill Suzanne Smith (Bowdoin College): "Beyond the Femme Fatale: New Types of Prostitutes in Turn-of-the-Century and Weimar Berlin," Symposium on the German Discovery of Sex, April 2015.Shaun Jacob Halper (Yale University): “Is Homosexuality a form of Genius? Reconsidering the Masculinist Wing of the First Homosexual Rights Movement in Central Europe," Symposium on the German Discovery of Sex, April 2015.Peter Rehberg (University of Texas): "'The Revolution Is Your Boyfriend': Sexual Utopias after Reich and Marcuse," Symposium on the German Discovery of Sex, April, 2015.Kevin Kopelson (University of Iowa), “Has-Beens of the Cinema Firmament,” October 2014.Alex Dimitrov, “The Poetics of Desire: Alex Dimitrov Reads from Begging for It,” October 2014.Richard Blanco, inaugural poet of the United States, 2013, "The Journey to the Podium," January 2014.Paul Julian Smith, professor of Spanish, CUNY Graduate Center, "Almodóvar in/and Latin America," October 2013.Michael S. Roth, president, Wesleyan University, "Freud and the Liberal Arts," September 2013.Stanley Corngold (Princeton University), “Franz Kafka and the Poetry of Risk Insurance.” April 2012Gerhard Richter(Brown University)leads a discussion of Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” German Film and the Frankfurt School, March 2012.Noah Isenberg, Professor of Literary Studies, Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts: “Revisiting 'The Decent German':Siegfried Kracauer's Critique of Postwar German Film."German Film and the Frankfurt School, March 2012.Michael Jennings, Professor of German, Princeton University: “Benjamin, Kracauer, and the Invention of the Criticism of Popular Culture.” German Film and the Frankfurt School, February 2012.Brad Epps, Professor of Romance Languages (Spanish) and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Harvard University: “The (Queer) Space of the Vampire: Materiality and Disappearance in the Films of Iván Zulueta.”Queer Theory at the Roundabout, December 2011.Worcester LGBT Asylum Taskforce, December 2011.Cary Alan Johnson, Executive Director, International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. “Practical Approaches to Impractical Struggles:Human Rights, Sexual Rights, and Queer Rights in a Global Context.”Queer Theory at the Roundabout, November 2011.Thibaut Schilt, Assistant Professor of French, College of the Holy Cross: “François Ozon and Queerness à la française.”Queer Theory at the Roundabout, November 2011.Andrew Parker, Professor of English, Amherst College: “Male Maternity in Nietzsche: Queering the Mother’s Gender.”Queer Theory at the Roundabout, October 2011Susan Bernofsky, “Translating Transnationalism: Yoko Tawada’s ‘Naked Eye.’” April 2011.Concert-Lecture: “A Mirror on Which to Dwell,” Elliott Carter’s Settings of Elisabeth Bishop’s poems, in honor of the 100thanniversary of Bishop’s birth in Worcester, MA. Featuring ECCE. April 2011. Symposium: “The German Discovery of Sex: Activism, Medicine and Literature.” Speakers: James Steakley (University of Wisconsin), Scott Spector (University of Michigan), Margaret Breen (University of Connecticut), Yvonne Ivory (University of North Carolina). April 2011Julia Ireland(Whitman College), “Natural Science and National Socialism: Sleuthing in the Heidegger Archives,” February 2011.Joachim Pfeiffer (Pädagogische Hochschule Freiburg), “Jacob the Liar,” March 2010.Rebecca Jordan-Young (Columbia University), “Hardwiring and Soft Science: Rethinking Sex in the Brain,” March 2010. (Facilitated and introduced.)Peter Filkins, “Translating Ingebord Bachmann,” at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, January 2010. (Contributed.)Nora Gomringer, slam poetry at Worcester Polytechnic University, December 2009)Symposium: “Global Freud.” Speakers: Veronika Fuechtner (Dartmouth), Rubén Gallo (Princeton), Nicole Simek (Whitman), Wendy Larson (University of Oregon), Keith Vincent (Boston University), Sander Gilman (Emory).November 2009.Zoe Beloff, “The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and its Circle,” October 2009.Sophie Freud, “Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family,” October 2009. (Facilitated and introduced.)
14Gerard Camoin, “Using Poetry to Speak French,” Fall 2009. (Contributed.)The Yes Men, film directors and provocateurs, screen early draft of film, April 2009.Zafer Senocak and Elizabeth O. Wright, “Poetry and Politics, March 2009.Workshop: “Film and Music: International Perspectives and Histories.” Visiting speakers: Julie Hubbert (University of South Carolina), Ivan Raykoff (New School University), Karl Nussbaum (Montclair State University)Lawrence Schehr (University of Illinois), “Beautiful Boys: Representing Gay Identity in Contemporary French Film,” October 2008.REVIEWING MANUSCRIPTS FOR JOURNALS, PRESSES, FELLOWSHIPS, UNIVERSITIESAdvisoryBoard, Academic and Professional Advisory Board, Harrington Park Press, 2014-Editorial Board of Goethe Society of North America’s book series,Bucknell University Press, 2006-10.Editorial Board of Philosophy and Literature, 2000-2002Reviewed articles submitted toCulture & Psychology, German Quarterly, Mosaic, Philosophy and Literature, Signs, Feminist Media Studies, Gegenwartsliteratur, Seminar, Symplokeand Women in GermanReviewed book manuscripts submitted to Palgrave Macmillan, Cornell University Press, University of Wisconsin Press, Wayne State University Press, University of Illinois Press, Peter Lang, University of Pennsylvania Press, and Bucknell University Press.Reviewed proposals submitted to Ohio State University Press.Reviewed applicationsfor Ohio State University grant and NEH grant.Reviewed applications for the American Academy in BerlinReviewed tenure cases for University of Calgary(Canada), University of Kent (United Kingdom), University of Ohio, University of Oklahoma, University of Pittsburgh, University of Rochester, University of South Carolina,University of Wyoming, Vassar Collegeand Whitman College.PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENTActive Participant in Northwest Language Consortium, a Mellon-funded project designed to train foreign-language faculty in use of technology in the classroom. 1996-2000Active Participant in Virtual German Collaborative, a nationwide project based at the Center for Educational Technology at Middlebury College for enhancing small-college German departments.Intensive French at the AllianceFrancaise in Paris, June 2011, July2013, June 2014.NATIONAL ACADEMIC SERVICEPresident, Vice President, and Second Vice Presidentof the GL/Q Caucus of the MLA, 2009, 2008, 2007, respectively.Chair of Crompton-Noll Committeefor Best Essay in Gay/Lesbian Studies of the GL/Q Caucus of the MLA, 2005-7Steering Committee for Critical Issues: Sex and Sexuality, 2004-8Executive Committee of the Division on Eighteenth-and Early-Nineteenth-Century German Literature, of the MLA, 2004-2008.Delegate to the Modern Language Association, 2012-15, 2004-6, 1998-2000.CLARK UNIVERSITY ACADEMIC SERVICESearch Committee for Assistant Professor of Screen Studies, Fall 2014Committee on Personnel, Fall 2014-(Chair, 2015-16)Mellon AdvisoryCommittee, Fall 2014-Case Preparer for Promotion Committee of Maria Acosta Cruz, Spanish, 2013-14Search Committee for Director of the Higgins School of the Humanities, Spring 2012
15Mellon Planning Group on the Humanitiesand Mellon Fellow, 2011“Enhanced” Research Board, 2011-13Planning and Budget Review, 2010-13Review of Chair of Department, 2011Case Preparer for Tenure Committee of Belen Atienza, SpanishSearch Committee for Professor in Spanish and Chair of Department, 2009-10 and 2010-11Task Forceon Undergraduate Education, 2008-9Freud Centennial Planning Committee, 2008-9COMMUNITY SERVICEPresident of the Board, Blue Mountain Heart to Heart (Walla Walla HIV/AIDS service organization), 2007, 1995; Board Member, Blue Mountain Heart to Heart, 1992-97, 2005-2008Governor’s Taskforce on Human Rights(Washington State), January-February 1993
Bio
Robert Deam Tobin is the inaugural occupant of the Henry J. Leir Chair in Foreign Languages and Cultures at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he teaches comparative literature with an emphasis on German Studies. Known especially for his publications on Goethe and Thomas Mann, his scholarship focuses on the interconnections between literature and medicine, sexuality, gender, and human rights.
Tobin Frank BackgroundEducation
After graduating from South Eugene High School, Robert Tobin received an A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1983, an M.A. in German from Princeton University in 1987, and a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1990. While an undergraduate he took part in Wayne State University’s junior year abroad program at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. As a graduate student he studied for two years at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg. He wrote his dissertation, “The Healing of Wilhelm Meister’s Soul: Medical Discourse in the ‘Bildungsroman,’” with Stanley Corngold.
Employment
Robert Tobin began his teaching career at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, in 1989. He was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 1994 and professor in 2002. In 2007, he was named the Cushing Eells Professor of the Humanities.
Professor Tobin has held the Henry J. Leir Chair in Comparative Literature at Clark University since 2008. He was hired at the rank of professor with tenure.
Awards and Fellowships
Professor Tobin received a fellowship for dissertation research from the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst or German Academic Exchange Service) in 1987. He was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the Free University in Berlin in 2000. He won a Rockefeller Fellowship in the Program for the Study of Sexuality, Gender, Health and Human Rights at Columbia University in 2004-5.
In 2013, he was the Fulbright Freud Visiting Scholar of Psychoanalysis in Vienna.
He has also received support from the National Endowment of the Humanities and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to participate in summer seminars and institutes for faculty. In 2011, he received funding from the DAAD to support a conference called “The German Discovery of Sex” at Clark University.
At Whitman College, Robert Tobin was named a Garrett Fellow for teaching and research in 1996. He was awarded the George Ball Award for Excellence in Advising in 1998 and the Edwards Award for the Integration of Teaching and Scholarship in 2008.
Administrative Experience and Service to the Profession and Community
At Clark University, he has worked on the Freud Centennial Planning Committee, the Task Force on Undergraduate Education, the Planning and Budget Review Committee, and the Personnel Committee
At Whitman College, Professor Tobin served as Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Division Chair of the Arts and Humanities, and Associate Dean of the Faculty.
In national professional organizations, he has been a delegate to the Modern Language Association Delegate Assembly three times, most recently representing gays and lesbians in the profession. He has been elected to the Executive Committee of the Division of Eighteenth- and Early-Nineteenth-Century German Literature of the Modern Languages Association (2004-2008). He was an officer of the GL/Q Caucus of the MLA from 2007-2009, serving as president of the caucus in his final year.
In Washington State, Robert Tobin served on the Governor’s Task Force on Human Rights in 1993. He completed several terms on the board of Blue Mountain Heart to Heart, an HIV/AIDS service organization in Walla Walla, and was twice president of the board.
Robert Tobin, PhD.
Professor of Language, Literature and Culture;
Henry J. Leir Chair in Comparative Literature
Clark University
950 Main Street
Worcester, MA 01610
Email: rtobin@clarku.edu
Phone: 1-508-793-7353
Robert Deam Tobin, Ph.D.
Henry J Leir Chair in Language, Literature and Culture
Department of Language, Literature and Culture
Clark University
Worcester, MA 01610-1477
phone: 508-793-7353
email: rtobin@clarku.edu
After growing up in Eugene, Oregon, Robert Deam Tobin received his A.B. in German Literature from Harvard College in 1983 and his M.A. and Ph.D. in German Literature from Princeton University in 1987 and 1990 respectively. Along the way, he spent his junior year at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich and worked on his dissertation for two years at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg.
Professor Tobin came to Clark University in the fall of 2008 as the inaugural occupant of the Henry J. Leir Chair in Language, Literature and Culture. Funded by the Ridgefield Foundation, the Leir Chair is an innovative new position designed to bring together scholars of different languages and cultures, reach out to other disciplines, and ensure that the study of language, literature and culture is present in the intellectual discussions of the community.
Tobin's first full-time position was at Whitman College, in Walla Walla, Washington, where he worked for 18 years. At Whitman College, he served as associate dean of the faculty and chair of the humanities and was named Cushing Eells Professor of the Humanities.
Tobin's areas of expertise include gay and lesbian studies, queer theory, gender studies, human rights, and German and European cultural studies. He has written extensively on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Thomas Mann, and Sigmund Freud, as well as the Eurovision Song Contest. His research has been funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (the DAAD) and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2000, he was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the Freie Universität in Berlin; in 2004-5, he was a Rockefeller Fellow in the Program for the Study of Sexuality, Gender, Health and Human Rights at Columbia University. In 2013, he was the Fulbright Freud Visiting Scholar of Psychoanalysis at the Sigmund Freud Museum and the University of Vienna in Austria.
Current Areas of Interest
Professor Tobin's most recent book is Peripheral Desires: The German Discovery of Sex (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) situates the emergence of discourses of modern sexuality in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German-speaking central Europe. In this book, Tobin studies literary, political, and scientific texts to show that modern categories of sexuality, like "homosexuality" and "heteroseuxality," have roots in such diverse cultural phenomena as the Enlightenment, Romanticism, the classical Greek tradition, Jewish emancipation, nationalism, colonialism and the women's movement. His next project will focus on human rights and literature.
The German invention of sexuality
John Lauritsen
The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide. 23.4 (July-August 2016): p16.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide
http://glreview.com
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Full Text:
Peripheral Desires: The German Discovery of Sex
by Robert Deam Tobin
University of Pennsylvania Press
326 pages, $69.95
BACKGROUND IN A NUTSHELL: the dark ages for gay men began in the 4th century CE, when Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire. A taboo carried forward from the Holiness Code of Leviticus imposed the death penalty for sex between males. Male love went underground, though men never ceased to love and have sex with each other. For centuries, male lovers suffered dishonor, imprisonment, torture, and death. With the Renaissance, the rebirth of classical antiquity, homoerotic themes began to reappear in art and literature. Then the philosophers of the 18th century Enlightenment brought a secular approach to matters of morality, and extended free inquiry to the nameless sin.
The first known written arguments for abolishing sodomy statutes (a generic term for any laws that criminalize sex between males) were made in the late 18th century by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who argued--brilliantly and comprehensively--that all-male sexual acts were not harmful and should not be punished. However, these writings were not published until nearly two centuries later ("Offenses Against One's Self: Paederasty," written circa 1785, first published in 1978).
In 1818, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote an essay, "A Discourse on the Manners of the Antient [sic] Greeks relative to the subject of Love," to accompany his translation of Plato's Symposium, which would have been the first in English to present the genders correctly. Unfortunately, Shelley's widow Mary suppressed and bowdlerized both the translation and the essay, which were not published as written for well over a century.
Later in the 19th century, the first open polemics would be published, and in 1897 the first activist organization would be founded. This brings us to the recently published Peripheral Desires: The German Discovery of Sex, by Robert Deam Tobin, Professor of German at Clark University. This is by no means the first book to cover the early homosexual emancipation movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Indeed, I believe that honor falls to David Thorstad and me for our book, The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864-1935), which was published in 1974.
But Tobin has a new approach. He describes his book as ultimately "about a history of ideas--ideas that would one day have a concrete force in people's lives, although they may have been obscure at the time of their emergence." In his Preface, Tobin describes two competing paradigms:
Much of the scientific research on sexual orientation continues to work on the assumption that homosexuals constitute a discrete minority, with biologically identifiable characteristics that often have something to do with gender inversion; this research typically claims to be part of a liberal political agenda. At the same time, a counter-discourse persists, according to which most people are bisexual and capable of strong erotic and emotional bonds with members of their own sex, even if they typically favor heterosexual liaisons.
Tobin indicates up front that Peripheral Desires will focus "almost entirely on men." Although his book covers a lot of historical and political ground, I'll concentrate on his primary thesis that sexual categories formulated in the 19th century have carried forward into the present.
First, a word about terminology: in order to avoid anachronism, Tobin chooses to use the nomenclature employed by the authors he studies--"urning," "invert," "homosexual," or whatever. That's fine, if occasionally awkward, but I myself will also use the word "gay" as sometimes the best and even least anachronistic term. (Rictor Norton in 1997's Myth of the Modern Homosexual has demonstrated that by the time of Byron and Shelley "gay" was already used underground in its present sense.)
ULRICHS, KERTBENY, AND WESTPHAL
In the year 1869 three writers addressed in German the topic of same-sex relations: the Latinist, lawyer, and independent scholar Karl Heinrich Ulrichs; the journalist Karl-Maria Kertbeny; and the physician Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal.
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, regarded as the grandfather of gay liberation, began in 1864 to issue a series of "social and juridical studies on the riddle of love between males." He coined the term "Urning" ("Uranian" in English) to represent what he believed was a rare variety of human male, a lusus naturae (sport of nature), an anomaly characterized by the formulation "anima muliebris corpore virili inclusa" (a female soul trapped in a male body). Urning is based on a speech in Plato's Symposium in which Pausanias postulates that there are two gods of love: Uranian (Heavenly) Eros, who governs principled male love, and Pandemian (Vulgar) Eros, who governs heterosexual or purely licentious relations. For Ulrichs, a Uranian might look male enough, but psychologically he was female.
The German-Hungarian writer Karl-Maria Kertbeny wrote two pamphlets in 1869, published anonymously, which demanded that sexual acts between males be freed from criminal sanctions. He was the first to use the word "homosexuality" (German "Homosexuality") for both male and female same-sex intercourse. Although etymologically and conceptually unsound, the new coinage was soon appropriated by medical writers, who used it to denote an abnormal condition of being attracted to one's own sex, or not attracted to the opposite sex, or both.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The German physician Karl Friedrich Otto Westphal coined the expression "die contraire Sexualempfinding" (contrary sexual feeling) to apply to a lesbian and a male transvestite under his observation. The part-French, part-German term was awkward, and in time it evolved into "sexual inversion." Westphal considered the condition to be an incurable neurological or psychological disease. In Tobin's words: "Whereas Ulrichs and Kertbeny present a relatively positive picture of the urning and the homosexual, Westphal's invert is quite clearly sick.... He believes this love is pathological to its core."
Tobin shows that despite their differences, all three--Ulrichs, Kertbeny, and Westphal--regarded the "fixed sexual attraction to men" as an inborn, unchangeable condition found only in a small minority of males. "All three see men who love men and women who love women as belonging to the same overarching category." Both Ulrichs and Westphal, though not Kertbeny, "emphasize gender inversion as the explanation for sexual attraction between members of the same sex." By the end of the 19th century, the terms originated by these men--Uranian, homosexual, and invert--became nearly synonyms, used interchangeably in medical and polemical literature.
But to backtrack three decades, Tobin's first chapter is devoted to Heinrich Hossli, a Swiss who published the first major polemic for the emancipation of male love, a two-volume work titled Eros: The Male Love of the Greeks, Its Relationship to History, Education, Literature, and Legislation of All Times (1836 and 1838). Making his case with a wealth of classical literature, as well as Persian, Arabic, and Turkish poetry, Hossli argued that male love was not a phantasy, a monstrosity, or a rare exception, but rather a universal human desire. Tobin's chapter on Hossli provides much valuable information on a neglected figure in the history of our movement.
Hossli vehemently compared the medieval persecution of alleged witches to the persecution of males who loved each other. It's hard to tell how much influence Hossli's work had, and such influence would have been largely underground--which opens up a possibility I've pondered for some time: the possibility that for ages, centuries even, there has existed an underground of gay scholars, ranging from medieval writers through Marlowe, Bentham, Shelley, Hossli, Ulrichs, John Addington Symonds, Richard Burton, and Edward Carpenter. Tobin sums up Hossli's work like this: "[Hossli] reorganized the intellectual givens of his time to put forth one of the first comprehensive visions of an identity based on same-sex sexual love that was inborn, natural, unchanging, essential, universal, ahistorical, and in need of some sort of social protection."
Ulrichs was inspired by a passage in Hossli, which quoted an article in a Munich newspaper that discussed the Kabbalistic belief in the transmigration of souls, according to which a female soul might end up in a male body. The Kabbalistic belief is that gendered souls, between reincarnations, are floating around, waiting to occupy bodies. Once in a while a female soul mistakenly ends up in a male body, resulting in a male invert, who is attracted only to other males. Hossli himself rejected this notion, arguing that some lovers of other males had quite masculine souls. But Ulrichs embraced the notion, from which he developed his key formulation concerning gay men: "a female soul trapped in a male body." Even today, the core transsexual credo is not too far from this medieval notion.
HIRSCHFELD AND FRIEDLAENDER
Next on the scene was Magnus Hirschfeld, who in 1897 co-founded the world's first activist homosexual rights organization, the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee. Although Tobin discusses him only briefly, Hirschfeld was in fact the leading figure in the international movement for sexual reform and homosexual rights for over three decades. Hirschfeld carried the ideas of Ulrichs even further, maintaining that the bodies as well as the psyches of homosexuals were sexually intermediate. Hirschfeld called homosexuals "sexual intergrades" or a "third sex," and lumped them together with transvestites and "pseudohermaphrodites" (people with ambiguous genitalia). We may admire Hirschfeld for his courage and energy, but many of the ideas with which he saddled the new movement were appalling. Opposition to the gender-inversion model was not long in coming, and it came from men that Tobin calls "masculinists." The masculinists greatly admired ancient Greece and its celebration of male-male love. Tobin treats the two opposing camps--the inversionists and the masculinists--evenhandedly, which is his privilege and perhaps best for the purposes of his book. My own sympathies lie with the so-called masculinists, and I write accordingly.
The leading masculinist was Adolf Brand, who published Der Eigene, the oldest journal devoted to gay love, some of whose issues were beautifully produced. A married man himself. Brand espoused bisexuality and followed the libertarian anarchist principles of Max Stirner (The Ego and His Own, 1844). In 1903 Brand founded the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, which can be translated in many ways, from Community of the Special to Community of Self-Owners. I now choose to translate it as Community of One's Own or perhaps even Community of Self-Possessed Men. (There were no women in the group.)
One of the first rebuttals to the inversionists came in a 1900 anthology by the artist Elisar von Kupffer, whose title translates roughly as "The Chivalrous Love of Young Men and the Love of Friends in World Literature." In a prefatory essay, Kupffer ridicules the notion of "a third sex, whose soul and body are supposed to be incompatible with each other," and comments that the geniuses and heroes of ancient Greece could "hardly be recognized in their Uranian petticoats." He writes: "At this point it is morally obligatory to let a ray of sunshine from the reality of our historical development fall on all this blather about sickness, on all this muck of lies and filth." Von Kupffer considered the freeing of male love to be part of the "emancipation of man for the revival of a manly culture." He discussed the word "masculine," which for him was not just the rougher qualities, but also an appreciation of male beauty and "preserving self-determination, personal freedom, and the common good."
Hirschfeld's most formidable opponent was Benedict Friedlaender, a supporter of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen, a scientist, a married man, and the father of two sons. In 1907 he led a split from the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee. In a position paper addressed to the friends and supporters of the Committee, he ridiculed the Ulrichs-Hirschfeld notion of the third sex and of "a poor womanly soul languishing away in a man's body." Friedlaender insisted that a truly scientific approach must take into account the facts of history and anthropology. In two sentences he annihilated the Hirschfeld position: "A glance at the cultures before and outside of Christendom suffices to show the complete untenability of the 'intermediate types' theory. Especially in ancient Greece, most of the military leaders, artists and thinkers would have had to be 'psychic hermaphrodites.'"
Friedlaender believed that members of the medical profession were overly prominent in the homosexual rights movement, giving the impression that the movement was concerned with some kind of disease or sickness. He considered "physiological friendship" to be an instinct present in all men--the basis of sociality--something of great value to society and to the individual. He believed that the great majority of men--especially married men--could and ought to experience male love.
In one passage, Friedlaender argued that such words as "atheist" or "Uming" can be used as put-downs just by labeling someone as an exception or peculiarity. He turns the tables on straight men by coining the word "Kummerling," referring to a stunted growth, like the suckers that grow on tree trunks: "By 'Kummerling' or 'moral Kummerling' I mean those men whose capacity for Lieblingminne [love of young men] has been artificially crippled through moral pressure in the same way as the feet of Chinese women have been crippled through the mechanical pressure of instruments of bodily constraint." In this analysis, what's "queer" is to be completely straight. Throughout his writings Friedlaender insists that loving men is a fully masculine characteristic. Although he was a scientist, he didn't hesitate to use the word "love," and he argued that one cannot make sharp distinctions among sex, love, and friendship, which are different expressions of the same thing.
If Friedlaender was appalled by Hirschfeld's ideas, the latter was horrified by Friedlaender's, and he wrote that his opponent's bisexuality and Kummerling theories were furnishing "water for the mill of the enemy." However, Hirschfeld did eventually respond to criticism, and by 1910 his "sexual intergrades" and "third sex" theories had pretty well fallen by the wayside.
The masculinists favored the scientific approach inasmuch as they backed up their arguments with evidence. Friedlaender began a section in his position paper by writing: "Now, what exactly is the science of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee?"--and then proceeded to demolish Hirschfeld's "third sex" theories. Throughout the writings of Friedlaender and other masculinists are attacks on superstition, priests, and clerics.
I think Tobin slights the role of religion in the condemnation of sex between males. In the very first Yearbook (1899), Eugen Wilhelm contributed a fifty-page history of laws that punish homosexual acts. He begins thus: "In Asia only the Jews seem to have had a penal provision against same-sex intercourse, and indeed they punished it with death." In the third book of Moses, God instructs: "You must not lie with boys as with women, for that is an abomination" and "Then whosoever commits such an abomination, their souls will be rooted out from their people." In the following chapter, it is commanded: "If someone sleeps with a boy, as with a woman, he has committed an abomination, and both of them shall be put to death, their blood is upon them." Wilhelm proceeds to quote the relevant passages from Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
A fold-out triptych published in the fifth Yearbook (volume I, 1903) amusingly illustrates the Third Sex theory. The overall title is: "Ratio Between the Hips and the Shoulders." The man on the left, leaning on a pedestal, holding a fig leaf over his genitals, is labeled "manly type": he has narrow hips and wide shoulders. The creature in the middle, masked, his membrum virile tucked between his flabby thighs, is labeled "Uranian type": his hips and shoulders are of equal width. The woman on the right (a painting) is labeled "womanly type": her hips are much wider than her shoulders. Well now, if anyone in this triptych is gay, it is the butch number on the left. I can imagine what he would be like in bed; he'd eat a big breakfast in the morning and say "thank you" as he left. Who knows what the interests of the Uranian type would be?
A NEW LOOK BACK--AND FORWARD
Besides the opposition between inversionists and masculinists, Peripheral Desires covers a lot of ground: colonialism, national politics and identity in the 19th century, and the emancipation of women. One chapter discusses a novel by Arnold Zweig, based on a real case involving the murder of a man living in Palestine before Israel was founded. He was both a pederast and an ultra-orthodox Jew. At first it was "assumed he was the victim of an Arab family whose honor had been outraged by [his] predilection for young Arab males." It turned out that his real murderers were Zionists who were opposed to his policies.
In a fascinating chapter called "Thomas Mann's Erotic Irony: The Dialectics of Sexuality in Venice," Tobin analyzes Death in Venice. Mann, who was sexually conflicted, subjects the ideas of the protagonist, Gustav von Aschenbach, to hostile scrutiny through the voice of the narrator. Greek love, as fancied by Aschenbach, leads in real life to death and decay, thus refuting the ideas of the masculinists. Far from being a gay classic, as is often assumed, the novel is insidiously hostile to male love.
Tobin is not sympathetic to those who "relied on the ancient Greek tradition, projecting same-sex desire on to the Hellenic world." Peripheral Desires is filled with snide comments on Greece and its admirers. Speaking as a gay Hellenist myself, I unashamedly consider ancient Greece the spiritual homeland for gay men; I believe in the Greek Miracle: that the finest aspects of Western Civilization developed in Athens. It is not necessary to project male love on to the Hellenic world. Male love was abundantly there, enthusiastically celebrated in art and literature.
Tobin neglects to mention Paul Brandt, who wrote under the pseudonym Hans Licht. A formidable Classical scholar, Licht wrote for the Yearbook and contributed a superb article, "Homosexuality in Classical Antiquity," to Magnus Hirschfeld's The Homosexuality of Men and Women (1914). This suggests that by 1914 Hirschfeld was not hostile to the Grecophile arguments of the masculinists. Tobin also does not mention Kurt Hiller, who was a leading activist in the early homosexual rights movement and a leading advocate for minority rights. Hiller's 1928 speech, "Appeal to the Second International Congress for Sexual Reform on Behalf of an Oppressed Human Variety," reflects the minoritizing views of the inversionists, but also the masculinist view that homosexual men could be robustly healthy and virile.
After ranging far afield for much of the book, Tobin brings his primary theme home in the last chapter, "Conclusion: American Legacies of the German Discovery of Sex," to show that the notions of the inversionists are still with us, and indeed prevail in many areas. He refers to decisions by the Supreme Court and the policies of other branches of the U.S. government: "According to this view, sexual orientation is innate and universal, a biological constant. The government puts its full weight behind a growing consensus that sexual orientation is analogous to gender and homosexuals form a discrete minority comparable to racial and ethnic minorities--a set of beliefs first articulated by thinkers like Hossli, Ulrichs, and Kertbeny."
Tobin refers to seriously flawed research by Simon LeVay and Nicholas Wade, which purportedly shows that homosexuals are physically as well as psychologically between male and female heterosexuals: "Research on same-sex desire continues to conflate transsexuality with same-sex desire, assuming that male desire for men is essentially the product of a feminine (or at least nonmasculine) brain in a male body." Concludes Tobin:
Debates that emerged in nineteenth-century German-speaking central Europe still structure discussions today. On the one hand, [the inversionists,] a modern, minoritizing, biologically based, liberal model of sexual orientation stands as a category comparable to gender and race. On the other hand, [the masculinists,] a model of a widespread, fluid, classically oriented, majoritizing, culturally based, aesthetically focused desire for members of one's own sex persists.
"Culturally based" is the only thing I dissent from here. While the masculinists saw that cultural factors determined the acceptance or condemnation of male love or Lieblingminne, they also saw that the capacity for such love is inborn in human males--and in virtually all males, not just a small minority. In modem terms, homoeroticism is a phylogenetic characteristic of the human male. Except for a few unfortunate Kummerlings, all males are at least potentially gay.
References
Friedlaender, Benedict. Die Liebe Platons im Lichte der modernen Biologie. Berlin 1905.
Hirschfeld, Magnus. The Homosexuality of Men and Women. Translated from the German by Michael A. Lombardi-Nash. Amherst, New York 2000. (Originally published in German in 1914; second edition 1919.)
Licht, Hans (Paul Brandt). Sittengeschichte Griechenlands. Dresden/Zurich 1925-28. (Bowdlerized translation as Sexual Life in Ancient Greece, 1932.)
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "A Discourse on the Manners of the Antient Greeks Relative to the Subject of Love." (Written in 1818, published in 1931.)
John Lauritsen's recent books include The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein and (as editor) Asschylus'plays as translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley and Thomas Medwin.
Tobin, Robert Deam. Peripheral desires: the German discovery of sex
E. Wickensham
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 53.8 (Apr. 2016): p1171.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
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Tobin, Robert Deam. Peripheral desires: the German discovery of sex. Pennsylvania, 2015. 306p bibl index afp ISBN 9780812247428 cloth, $69.95; ISBN 9780812291865 ebook, $69.95
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This unique volume by the author of Warm Brothers (CH, Feb'01, 38-3215) begins with a history of theoretical writings in German that formulate the vocabulary and perceptions of male homosexuality persisting to the present day. Tobin (Clark Univ.) writes that beginning with Heinrich Hossli's Eros in the 1830s and continuing for 100 years, an interesting range of largely unknown authors speculated on models of behavior and biological-versus-environmental justifications for male-male interactions. Tobin includes chapters on Jews and homosexuality, German colonialism and politics, and the emancipation of women and Swiss universities. Most interesting are the discussions of Adalbert Stifter's Brigitta, Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, and Arnold Zweig's De Vriendt kehrt heim. Especially intriguing is the treatment of newer novels, examined in the conclusion, "American Legacies of the German Discovery of Sex." Tobin analyzes Michael Cunningham's Before Nightfall and Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding, books that recommend themselves because of Tobin's provocative comments. Original and full of stimulating insights, this well-researched volume with a complete, competent scholarly apparatus will interest a broad audience. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty; general readers.--E. Wickersham, Rosemont College
Peripheral Desires: The German Discovery of Sex
Helmut Puff
Philological Quarterly. 95.2 (Spring 2016): p307.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 University of Iowa
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Peripheral Desires: The German Discovery of Sex by Robert Deam Tobin. University of Philadelphia Press, 2015. Pp. xx + 306.
When sexuality studies in the humanities first emerged, its practitioners mostly championed transnational perspectives. It is therefore nothing short of remarkable how this field of inquiry has also inspired fresh takes on particular communities as delimited by geography, politics, or languages. Importantly, several recent studies (Robert Beachy, Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014], Scott Spector, Violent Sensations: Sex, Crime, and Utopia in Vienna and Berlin, 1860-1914 [U. of Chicago Press, 2016]), call attention to what the formidable monograph under review titles The German Discovery of Sex--the fact that German-speaking Europe left a lasting mark on how modern societies have come to understand human sexuality.
Robert Tobin commences his exploration of German-language thought on sex in 1869, the year when several writers coined terms that charted what they respectively saw as a distinct phenomenon: homosexual (Karl Maria Kertbeny), urning (Karl Heinrich Ulrichs), and invert (Carl Westphal). Such coinages have frequently been cited as signaling the birth of an era during which modern sexual taxonomies gained currency. As Tobin argues, this moment mattered above all because the many German-language publications on the sexual peripheries spawned a vast textual imaginary about sexual selfhood--debates that flourished at the seams of liberalism, historicism, nationalism, colonialism, feminism, antimodernism, and eugenics. Between the age of revolutions and the rise of National Socialism, in other words, an increasing number of activists, experts, and writers thought through the nexus of personhood and sexuality. While they refracted the many political, legal, social, and intellectual contexts that their writings responded to, identity as a category apt to engender collectives reigned supreme. Its conceptual contestations resonated with the radical changes and social transformations Germany, Switzerland, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire underwent during these decades.
Tobin carves out a number of discursive vectors that permeated fin-de-siecle central European discourses on sex. Ancient Greeks were said to have much in common with Germans. Their admired civilization offered multiple models for reforming sex in modern times. Comparisons of men and women on the sexual margins with groups such as Jews also abounded. Initially, this move legitimated campaigns for the decriminalization of sex between consenting adults. Yet in fin-de-siecle Europe persistent analogies between a religious minority and covert sexual subjectivities increased anxieties about what went as degeneracy and feminization. Debates on the legal status of women therefore intersected in complex ways with sexual politics. After all, sexologists had frequently described men-loving men and women-loving women as an intermediate or third sex, whose minds and bodies signaled gender inversion. The proliferation of German ideas on sex coincided and intersected also with the colonial expansion of imperial Germany in Africa and the Pacific. The island of Samoa served as a potent projection screen for sexualized colonial fantasies suspended between imagined affinities on the one hand and efforts to perpetuate racial hierarchies on the other hand.
In these vibrant discussions and ever-shifting critical engagements, the notion of homosexuals as a minority defined by an inborn condition (however defined or described) rubbed against an awareness that homoeroticism was culturally specific and subject to historic change. Its continued cachet in the arts notwithstanding, Greek pederasty proved inadequate for capturing the same-sex bonds researchers and other observers encountered in the societies of their own day, for instance; this problem already haunted Heinrich Hossli's pioneering text on male-male love, Eros (1836/1838). A competing strand of thought rejected the notion that sexual desire imparted a particular identity. Proponents of what Tobin calls the masculinist model-Elisar von Kupffer, Adolf Brand, Hans Bluher, Benedict Friedlaender, and others--hailed homoerotic love as a formative bond for the military and the state that would help these and other institutions withstand modern fragmentation; not surprisingly, writers in this vein showed little interest in the cause of women or lesbian love; for these conservative thinkers, "Friendship became the preferred mode of erotic masculine relationships" (65). As Tobin demonstrates, the rise of medical sciences as authorities on matters of sex did not go unchallenged. In Man without Qualities, Robert Musil debated "the increasing role of medicine and psychiatry in legalistic definitions of sexual pathologies" (118).
Some of the writings covered in Peripheral Desires are well studied. Other sections on lesser-known literary texts such as Adalbert Stifters Brigitta (1844; 1847), Karl May's On the Quiet Ocean (1883-84), Ernst von Wolzogen's The Third Sex (1899), and Otto Julius Bierbaum's Prince Cuckoo (1906-7) add analytic texture to Tobin's imaginative tour d'horizon through the sexual margins as imagined in German writings. The book's arc culminates in close readings of Thomas Manns Death in Venice (1912) and Arnold Zweig's De Vriendt Returns (1932). When these novelists turned homosexual men into protagonists, they drew on the rich nexus of German sexological thought while transforming the relevant discourses through emplotment. Interestingly, the main character in Mann's novella, a successful writer, embraces Plato's universal manly eros, though at the same time he comes to recognize himself and is recognized by others as a gay man. Based on the life story of a Dutch Jew who moved to Palestine where he had sexual relations with Arab youths only to be murdered by Zionists, Zweig's novel in turn challenges the idea that sexual desires are comparable to religious, national, ethnic, or other orientations, contrary to what many activists or sexologists claimed. Throughout this book, Tobin thus makes a poignant case for literary texts as a unique receptacle for thinking through sex. Fiction showcases and sharpens the many strands, if not contradictions, that permeated German thought on sex and have shaped our conversations ever since. An epilogue surveys the manifold resonances of nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries German sexology in contemporary North America, with a particular focus on Michael Cunningham's By Nightfall (2010) and Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding (2011)--two novels that reimagine Mann's 1912 classic.
Peripheral Desires offers eye-opening avenues through the rich German-language archive on sex--where, it needs to be said, Sigmund Freud makes but fleeting appearances. What is more, this study recommends itself through concise descriptions, probing arguments, and refreshing frames of understanding bound to enlighten general readers interested in sexual modernity as well as specialists in the German literary traditions. Tobin thus fuels one's desire to uncover more about the pioneering texts and elucidating contexts that make The German Discovery of Sex such a compelling read.
Helmut Puff
University of Michigan