Associate Professor Katie Sutton
Areas of expertise
- German Language 200307
- Culture, Gender, Sexuality 200205
- European History (Excl. British, Classical Greek And Roman) 210307
Research interests
My research and teaching interests focus particularly on German 20th and 21st-century culture, literature, and history, from the cultural dynamism of the Weimar Republic to contemporary trans and queer literature. Much of my research examines the history of gender and sexuality, including a new collaborative project on photography and film in 20th-century sex research.
My latest book, Sexuality in Modern German History (Bloomsbury, 2023) offers a survey study across 200 years of German history, investigating the diverse and often contradictory ways in which individuals, activists, doctors, politicians, artists, social movements and cultural commentators have defined 'normal' sexuality in Germany over the past two centuries, and how these definitions have been used to shape identities, behaviours, bodies and practices.
Sex between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the German-speaking World, 1890s-1930s (University of Michigan Press, 2019) is a cultural history of sexuality and medical-scientific sex research examining debates around the sexual life of the child, the nature of shellshock, the origins of homosexuality, trans identity, and the role of the sex hormones. It is the first book to closely examine vital encounters among this era’s German-speaking researchers across their emerging professional and disciplinary boundaries. Reviews: German History, Monatshefte, German Studies Review, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, Studies in 20th and 21st Century Literature, Social History of Medicine, Sexuologie.
The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany (Berghahn Books, 2011) explores the widely-discussed 'masculinization of woman' in 1920s German popular culture, in areas such as fashion, sport, literature, cinema, and magazines produced by newly emerging sexual minorities. It traces the connotations and controversies surrounding this figure from her rise to media prominence in the early 1920s until the beginning of the Nazi period. Reviews: American Historical Review, Choice, German Quarterly, German Studies Review, German History, The Historian, Seminar, Women's History Review, Women in German Newsletter.
Case Studies and the Dissemination of Knowledge (Routledge, 2015), co-edited with Joy Damousi and Birgit Lang, is one of the outcomes of the ARC Discovery Project "Making the Case: The Case Study Genre in Sexology, Psychoanalysis, and Literature" (2010-2014). This collection examines how cases serve as a means of passage between disciplines, genres, and publics, from law to psychoanalysis, and from auto/biography to modernist fiction.
Researcher's projects
Past Grants and Awards
2010-2014: Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship in conjunction with ARC Discovery Project "Making the Case: The Case Study Genre in Sexology, Psychoanalysis and Literature," Chief Investigators Dr Birgit Lang and Professor Joy Damousi, University of Melbourne
2009-2010: German Academic Exchange Service postdoctoral fellowship, University of Potsdam, Germany
2009 Women in German Dissertation Prize (USA)
2009 Stiftung für Deutsch-Amerikanische Wissenschaftsbeziehungen (SDAW) / German Studies Association (GSA) Award for Best Paper by a Social Scientist within Five Years of the Doctorate. Paper presented at the GSA annual meeting in St Paul, MI, 2008.
Past student projects
PhD Panels:
Tobi Evans. "Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things: Masculinities in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire" (2015-2019)
Jonathon Zapasnik. "Precarious Proximities: A Symptomatological Reading of Intimacy in Anglophone HIV/AIDS Life Writing" (2014-2019)
Honours:
Celeste Sandstrom. Thesis title: Prioritising Experience: Reparative Reading and Trans Studies (completed sem. 2, 2021)
Yushu Soon. Thesis title: Eine neue Solidargemeinschaft? Die soziale Bedeutung der Flucht- und Migrationsliterature (completed sem. 2, 2019)
Alessa Kron. Thesis title: Leaden Secrets: Female Terrorists in West German and Italian Film (German Studies and Italian Studies, co-supervision, completed sem. 2, 2019)
Matthew Hicks.Thesis title: "Sprachliche Unterdrückung. Zur Stellung von LGBT-Menschen im Deutschen" (co-supervision, completed sem. 2, 2017)
James Prindiville. Thesis title: "Mythos, Nostalgie und Melancholie in Ernst Marischkas "Sissi"-Filmen und ihr Einfluss auf die österreichische nationale Identität (completed sem. 1, 2017)
Ruohan Zhao. Thesis title: "Ost, West und alles dazwischen: Verhandlung, Versöhnung und chinesisch-deutsche hybride Identitäten in der deutschen Gegenwartsliteratur" (completed sem. 2, 2016)
Ji-Soo Kweon. Thesis title: "All Adventurous Women are White, All the Queers are Men, And Most of Us Are Missing: Post-feminism and Intersectionality in Sex and the City and Girls" (co-supervised with Rosanne Kennedy, completed sem. 2, 2016)
Natasha Seymour. Thesis title: "Understanding and Articulating the "In Between": Transgender Embodiment in Culture" (completed sem. 1, 2016)
Publications
- Sutton, K 2023, Sexuality in Modern German History, Bloomsbury Publishing, London,New York, Dublin.
- Lang, B & Sutton, K 2022, 'An Ethics of Attentiveness: Photographic Portraits and Deviant Dwelling in German Queer and Trans Archives', Monatshefte für deutschsprachige Literatur und Kultur, vol. 114, no. 3, pp. 363-383.
- Stone, B & Sutton, K 2022, 'Sex, Secrets and Surveillance: Antje Rávik Strubel's Sturz der Tage in die Nacht (2011)', in Heather Merle Benbow, Andrew Wright Hurley and Brangwen Stone (ed.), Geheimnisse/Secrets : Limbus Australian Yearbook of German Literary and Cultural Studies, Rombach Wissenschaft, Germany, pp. 101-113.
- Bauer, H, Pappademos, M, Sutton, K et al. 2022, 'Visual Histories of Sex: Collecting, Curating, Archiving', Radical History Review, vol. 142, pp. 1-18.
- Sutton, K 2021, 'Standing Outside Oneself: Transgender Gazing In Antje Rávik Strubel's 'Kältere Schichten der Luft' (2007) and 'In den Wäldern des menschlichen Herzens' (2016)', German Life and Letters, vol. 74, no. 2, pp. 224-246.
- Sutton, K 2021, 'Kinsey and the psychoanalysts: Cross-disciplinary knowledge production in post-war US sex research', History of the Human Sciences, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 120-147.
- Leng, K & Sutton, K 2021, 'Histories of sexology today: Reimagining the boundaries of scientia sexualis', History of the Human Sciences, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 3-9.
- Sutton, K 2021, 'Die Popularisierung der Sexualforschung: Wissenschaftliche Seriosität und Normverschiebungen in Filmen der Weimarer Republik [The popularization of sex research: Scientific respectability and shifting norms in films of the Weimar Republic]', in Florian Mildenberger (ed.), Transatlantische Emanzipationen, Männerschwarm Verlag, Berlin, Germany, pp. 249-276.
- [Book Review] Sutton, K 2021, 'The Naked Truth: Viennese Modernism and the Body. By Alys X. George. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2020. Pp. xi + 322. Cloth $45.00. ISBN 978-0226669984', Central European History, vol. 54, no. 3, pp. 546 - 548.
- [Book Review] Sutton, K 2021, "Gelderloos, Carl. Biological Modernism: The New Human in Weimar Culture," Reviewed by Katie Sutton', The German Quarterly, vol. 94, no. 1, pp. 139-141.
- Sutton, K 2019, Sex between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the German-Speaking World, 1890s-1930s, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
- Sutton, K & Leng, K 2019, 'Forum Introduction: Rethinking the Gendered History of Sexology', Gender and History, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 256-265.
- Sutton, K & Leng, K, eds, 2019, Sexology Forum: Rethinking the Gendered History of Sexology. Gender and History vol. 31, issue 2 (2019)
- Stone, B & Sutton, K 2019, 'German Cultural Studies in Australia: Beyond Nation and Department', The German Quarterly, vol. 92, no. 4, pp. 484-487.
- Lewis, A, Sutton, K & Weller, C, eds, 2019, Kosmopolitische Gedankenwelten/Cosmopolitan Imaginings, Koenigshausen & Neumann, Germany.
- Sutton, K 2018, 'Sexology's Photographic Turn: Visualizing Trans Identity in Interwar Germany', Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 442-479.
- Sutton, K 2018, 'Review Essay: A Tale of Origins: The Emergence of Sexual Citizens in German Modernity', Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 186-206.
- Lang, B & Sutton, K 2016, 'The Queer Cases of Psychoanalysis: Rethinking the Scientific Study of Homosexuality, 1890s-1920s', German History, vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 419-444.
- [Book Review] Sutton, K 2016, 'Book Review: Berlin Coquette: Prostitution and the New German Woman, 1890-1933, by Jill Suzanne Smith. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013', Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 204-206.
- Sutton, K 2015, 'Representing the "Third Sex": Cultural Translations of the Sexological Encounter in Early Twentieth-Century Germany', in Heike Bauer (ed.), Sexology and Translation: Cultural and Scientific Encounters across the Modern World, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, PA, USA, pp. 53-71.
- Sutton, K 2015, 'Sexological Cases and the Prehistory of Transgender Identity Politics in Interwar Germany', in Joy Damousi, Birgit Lang and Katie Sutton (ed.), Case Studies and the Dissemination of Knowledge, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, New York and Abingdon, pp. 85-103.
- Damousi, J, Lang, B & Sutton, K, eds, 2015, Case Studies and the Dissemination of Knowledge, Routledge, New York.
- Lang, B & Sutton, K 2015, 'The Aesthetics of Sexual Ethics: Geschlecht und Gesellschaft and Middle-Class Sexual Modernity in Fin-De-Siecle Germany', Oxford German Studies, vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 177-198.
- Damousi, J, Lang, B & Sutton, K 2015, 'Introduction: Case Studies and the Dissemination of Knowledge', in Joy Damousi, Birgit Lang and Katie Sutton (ed.), Case Studies and the Dissemination of Knowledge, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, New York and Abingdon, pp. 1-12.
- Sutton, K 2014, 'From Sexual Inversion to Trans: Transgender History and Historiography', in F. Mildenberger, J. Evans, R. Lautmann, J. Pastötter (ed.), Was ist Homosexualität? Forschungsgeschichte, gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen und Perspektiven, Männerschwarm Verlag, Hamburg, Germany, pp. 181-204.
- Sutton, K 2014, 'Sexual Pathologies and the Violence of War: Sexological and Psychoanalytic Responses to World War I', Limbus: Australian Yearbook of German Literary and Cultural Studies, vol. 7, pp. 197-218.
- Sutton, K 2014, 'Trading Transvestite Cases in Sexology, Psychoanalysis, and Weimar Sexual Subcultures', in Alan Corkhill and Alison Lewis (ed.), Intercultural Encounters in German Studies, Roehrig Universitaetsverlag, St. Ingbert, Germany, pp. 323-340.
- [Book Review] Sutton, K 2014, Mila Ganeva, Women in Weimar Fashion: Discourses and Displays in German Culture, 1918-1933 [2008, Pb. 2011], in LIMBUS: Australisches Jahrbuch für germanistische Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft / Australian Yearbook of German Literary and Cultural Studies, ed. A. Lewis, F.-J. Deiters, A. Fliethmann, B. Lang, C. Weller (Freiburg: Rombach).
- [Book review] Sutton, K 2013, The New Woman International. Representations in Photography and Film from the 1870s through the 1960s, ed. Elizabeth Otto and Vanessa Rocco [2011], in LIMBUS: Australisches Jahrbuch für germanistische Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft / Australian Yearbook of German Literary and Cultural Studies, ed. A. Lewis, F.-J. Deiters, A. Fliethmann, B. Lang, C. Weller (Freiburg: Rombach), pp. 258-59.
- [Book review] Sutton, K 2013, Contemplating Violence: Critical Studies in Modern German Culture, ed. Stefani Engelstein and Carl Niekerk [2011], in Women in German Newsletter #122, Summer.
- Sutton, K 2012, '"We Too Deserve a Place in the Sun": The Politics of Transvestite Identity in Weimar Germany', German Studies Review, vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 335-54.
- Sutton, K & Norman, B 2012, '"Memory is always a story": An Interview with Antje Ravic Strubel', Women in German Yearbook, vol. 28, pp. 98-112.
- [Book review] Sutton, K 2012, Erik N. Jensen, Body by Weimar. Athletes, Gender, and German Modernity (2010), in German Quarterly, vol. 85, no. 1, p. 106.
- Sutton, K 2011, The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany, Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford.
- [Book review] Sutton, K 2011, Julia Roos, Weimar Through the Lens of Gender: Prostitution Reform, Woman's Emancipation, and German Democracy, 1919-33 [2010], in H-Histsex (online publication).
- Sutton, K 2009, 'The Masculinized Female Athlete in Weimar Germany', German Politics and Society, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 29-49.
- Sutton, K 2008, 'From Dandies to Naturburschen: The Gendering of Men's Fashions in Weimar Germany', Edinburgh German Yearbook, vol. 2, pp. 130-148.
- Sutton, K 2007, 'Bridging the Rural/Urban Divide: Representations of Queer Female Experience in 1920s Germany', in From Weimar to Christiania: German and Scandinavian Studies in Context, ed. F. Feiereisen and K. Frackman (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing), pp. 37-53.
- Sutton, K 2007, 'Von Pop zu Queercore: Möglichkeiten einer queerpolitischen Lyrik in der Musik', in Das Innerste von außen. Zur deutschsprachigen Lyrik des 21. Jahrhunderts, ed. G. Reifarth (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann), pp. 267-276.
- Sutton, K 2005, 'Female Masculinities and Conflicting Lesbian Identities in Anna Elisabet Weirauch's "Der Skorpion", in Quer durch die Geisteswissenschaften: Perspektiven der Queer Theory, ed E. Haschemi Yekani and B. Michaelis (Berlin: Querverlag), pp. 267-81.
- Sutton, K 2004, 'Female Masculinity in Weimar Cinema', Traffic, no. 4, pp. 27-48.
- Sutton, K 2003, 'The Nazi and Communist Press and the Late-Weimar Abortion Debate,' Lilith: A Feminist History Journal, vol. 12, pp. 123-38.
Projects and Grants
Grants information is drawn from ARIES. To add or update Projects or Grants information please contact your College Research Office.
- Visual evidence: transforming modern sex research (1880s - 1930s) Ext Led (Primary Investigator)