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

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www.theneohistorian.com

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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

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Everybody Loves Our Town: A History of Grunge by Mark Yarm - published exactly twenty years after the release of Nirvana's landmark album Nevermind - is said to be the definitive word on grunge.

Grunge, also known as the 'Seattle sound', is the sludgy fusion of punk rock and heavy metal that emerged from the Pacific Northwest in the early part of the 1980s. But it was the unexpected, seemingly overnight success of Nirvana's single 'Smells Like Teen Spirit,' in the fall of 1991, that made grunge a household word and launched an American music movement on par with punk and hip-hop.

20 years later, Mark Yarm captures that era in the words of those at the forefront of the movement (and the music's lesser-known champions). Everybody Loves Our Town will tell the whole story: the founding of originators like Soundgarden and the Melvins, the early successes of Seattle's Sub Pop record label, the rise of powerhouses Nirvana and Pearl Jam, the insane media hype surrounding the grunge explosion, the suicide of Kurt Cobain, and finally, the genre's mid-to-late-'90s decline.

Mark Yarm is an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia Journalism School and the former tech desk editor at BuzzFeed News (RIP). Prior to BuzzFeed, he worked at Input, BreakerMag, and Blender. In addition, he has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Wired, WSJ. Magazine, and Rolling Stone. His book Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge, was named as a Time magazine book of the year.

https://www.theneohistorian.com/

Buy the book: Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge

Mark Yarm: online

Twitter: https://x.com/markyarm

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