In this episode of The Neo Historian we are joined by Dr Sébastien Tremblay to talk about a history of the pink triangle.

Sébastien talks us through how a symbol of persecution, created by the Nazis to shame people classified as homosexual during the National Socialist regime and found on the chest of men condemned to death in concentration camps, developed into a symbol of survival and resistance around the world in the late twentieth century. We also hear about groups who were excluded from using the symbol and those who refused to use the pink triangle under any circumstances. Furthermore Sébastien tells us how the 'symbolic' repositioning of the triangle from the Nazi version pointing down to the optimistic Act-Up version point up, may have been no more than a graphic design oversight.

A Badge of Injury: The Pink Triangle as Global Symbol of Injury is a contribution to both the fields of queer and global history. It analyses gay and lesbian transregional cultural communication networks from the 1970s to the 2000s, focusing on the importance of National Socialism, visual culture, and memory in the queer Atlantic. Provincializing Euro-American queer history, it illustrates how a history of concepts which encompasses the visual offers a greater depth of analysis of the transfer of ideas across regions than texts alone would offer. It also underlines how gay and lesbian history needs to be reframed under a queer lens and understood in a global perspective. Following the journey of the Pink Triangle and its many iterations, A Badge of Injury pinpoints the roles of cultural memory and power in the creation of gay and lesbian transregional narratives of pride or the construction of the historical queer subject. Beyond a success story, the book dives into some of the shortcomings of Euro-American queer history and the power of the negative, writing an emancipatory yet critical story of the era.

Published in hardcover in 2023 by De Gruyter Oldenbourg and in paperback in 2025.

Dr. Sébastien Tremblay (he/him) is research associate and lecturer in Modern and Contemporary History at the Europa-University Flensburg. He is also co-director of the research school of its interdisciplinary centre for European Studies. Born in Montreal he obtained his doctorate from the Graduate School of Global Intellectual History in Berlin in 2020.

Buy the book: A Badge of Injury: The Pink Triangle as Global Symbol of Injury (De Gruyter Brill)

Dr Sébastien Tremblay: Europa Universität Flensburg

Dr Sébastien Tremblay: Bluesky

Other books mentioned in this episode:

Erinnern stören: Der Mauerfall aus migrantischer und jüdischer Perspektive by Lydia Lierke und Massimo Perinelli

Labor 89. Intersektionale Bewegungsgeschichte*n aus West und Ost. Berlin by Peggy Piesche

www.theneohistorian.com

www.theneohistorian.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of The Neo Historian we are joined by Dr Guy Mankowski to talk about a history of Kristen Pfaff.

Kristen Pfaff was an American musician best known as the bassist for the alternative rock band Hole and the noise rock band Janitor Joe. She was also a backing vocalist for Janitor Joe and contributed to Hole's critically acclaimed 1994 album, Live Through This. Pfaff died in 1994 at the age of 27 from a heroin overdose, just two months after her close friend Kurt Cobain's suicide.

Guy speaks with us in this episode about Kristen Pfaff's family life, her feminist activism, life in Hole, how she reacted to the death of her friend Kurt Cobain, just six weeks before her own death and how she is remembered today.

I know How to Live: The Life of Kristen Pfaff by Dr Guy Mankowski

With access to her audio diaries, personal notebooks and other archives Guy Mankowski has written a biography of Kristen Pfaff, with the close co-operation of her brother Jason Pfaff and other people who knew Pfaff well. The resulting project title 'I Know How To Live Well' is now a very popular Substack where subscribers can access the biography of the iconic bassist through various mediums.

Dr. Guy Mankowski is a writer and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the Lincoln School of Creative Arts. His research interests include music writing, particularly depictions of post-punk and subculture. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Authority.

Read the book on Substack: 'I Know How To Live': The Life of Kristen Pfaff

Dr Guy Mankowski: Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at University of Lincoln

Follow Guy on: Instagram

Guy's Ted Talk: YouTube

Guy's First Appearance on the Podcast: A History of England's Pop Rebels and Outsiders

Episode #5: A History of Grunge with Mark Yarm

No Treble: Wonder Women: “I Know How To Live:” The Life of Kristen Pfaff

Hit So Hard: A Memoir by Patty Schemel

Heavier Than Heaven: The Biography of Kurt Cobain by Charles R. Cross

Everybody Loves Our Town: A History of Grunge by Mark Yarm

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind

www.theneohistorian.com

www.theneohistorian.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of The Neo Historian we are joined by Dr Matt Lodder to talk about the history of tattooing as an art form and profession. Matt tells us how tattoos existed in England long before Captain Cook was said to have brought the art form to London, the influence of Yakuza gangs on Japan's Onsen rules and on how a butcher from Wapping tempted 19th century aristocrats to tattoo their own children!

Tattoos: The Untold History of a Modern Art by Dr Matt Lodder

The true history of tattoo as both art and profession in the West.

There is a pervasive stereotype of tattoo culture as relating to an underworld of scoundrels, sailors, and ne’er-do-wells, yet it has existed in the West as a professionalized art practice for centuries. Drawing on extensive new research and unprecedented access to largely unpublished private archives of photographs, art, and ephemera, Matt Lodder offers a new perspective on the history of commercial tattooing in Europe and the United States, beginning even before it emerged as a recognizable profession in the mid-nineteenth century. In the process, he shows that the art of tattoo has long been both practiced and commissioned by individuals across economic, gender, and class divides; he also examines the stylistic trends that have shaped tattoo’s development as an art form over its history.

Lodder introduces the many artists and professionals who shaped tattoo history, including early figures like Martin Hildebrandt, the first-known professional tattoo artist in the West; prominent woman artists like Grace Bell and Jessie Knight; mid-twentieth-century icons like Sailor Jerry and Les Skuse and the Bristol Tattoo Club; and contemporary industry stars including Ed Hardy, Davy Jones, and the Leu family. Richly illustrated with rarely published images, this important book is the first to examine the history of tattoo in the west as both a serious profession and an art form.

Dr Matt Lodder is a Senior Lecturer in Art History and Theory, and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Art History at the University of Essex, and one of the University of Essex' Public Voice Scholars. He teaches European, American and Japanese art, architecture, visual culture and theory from the late 19th century to the present, including modern and contemporary art post-1945, digital and "new media" art, and the intersections between art & politics.

Buy the book: Tattoos: The Untold History of a Modern Art

Dr Matt Lodder: University of Essex Senior Lecturer

Matt Lodder: Instagram

Matt Lodder's Podcast: Beneath the Skin

https://www.theneohistorian.com/

www.theneohistorian.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.