Faculty Spotlight: Nazism is Not the Past — Hannah Leffingwell on Dagmar Herzog, Sex After Fascism, and Why Donald Trump is Not Camp

What does sexual morality have to do with genocidal politics? In this episode of Faculty Spotlight, hosts Mark DeLucas and Lauren K. Wolfe sit down with Hannah Leffingwell—historian, queer theorist, musician, and novelist—to discuss the work of Dagmar Herzog, historian of sexuality whose celebrated book Sex After Fascism undid the myth that all Nazis were closeted homosexuals by exposing how it arose in the first place, and that long after the war had ended. Along the way, the three hash out: the uses and pitfalls of theory in the study of history, strategic misprisions of the past for political needs in the present, what sort of lens the history of sexuality can be for understanding mass political phenomena, and whether and how to invoke 20th-century fascisms to explain conservative reaction in the 21st. Tune in to discover why Nazism is not the past, how fascism was never anti-sex, why anti-queer and anti-trans animus have never been peripheral, why Trump can never be camp, and positive panegyrics for Chappell Roan and A Complete Unknown. Faculty Spotlight is produced by Ryan Lentini. Notes: Dagmar Herzog, Sex After Fascism (Princeton University Press, 2007) Dagmar Herzog, Cold War Freud (Cambridge University Press, 2016) Dagmar Herzog, The Question of Unworthy Life (Princeton University Press, 2024) Dagmar Herzog, Sex in Crisis (Basic Books, 2008) Sabrina Carpenter performing “Espresso” at the 2025 Grammys Chappell Roan performing “Pink Pony Club” at the 2025 Grammys Lesser Known Women (Hannah’s band) on Spotify and Bandcamp Lesser Known Women performing at Sunset Stoop on March 8th!   Learn more about upcoming courses on our website. Follow Brooklyn Institute for Social Research on Twitter / Facebook / Instagram / Bluesky