Lisa Todd

Lisa Todd teaches in the fields of Modern Germany, European History, Gender and Sexuality, and War and Society. She holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Toronto (2005), an MA in Modern History from Royal Holloway College, University of London (1998) and a BA (History Honours, Comparative Literature Major, German Minor) from the University of New Brunswick (1997).

Dr. Todd’s first book, Sexual Treason in Germany during the First World War (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2017), examines sexual relationships between soldiers and civilians in Germany and Occupied Europe, 1914-1920. It was a finalist for both the Canadian Historical Association’s Wallace K. Ferguson Prize and the Waterloo Centre for German Studies Book Prize. Her current SSHRC-funded research project, “Racial Citizenship:  Miscegenation, Scientific Authority, and the Creation of Intimate ‘Others’ in Modern Germany, 1880-1950” examines the anthropological interest in “mixed race” sexual relationships, from the colonial period in southern Africa, to the end of the Third Reich.

Dr. Todd is the recipient of a UNB Merit Award, the 2022 UNB Faculty of Arts Excellence in Teaching Award, Full-Time, the 2016 UNB Student Union Teaching Excellence Award, and the 2010 UNB Faculty of Arts Excellence in Teaching Award, Part-Time.

Publications

With Gary K. Waite. Eds. European Racism: A History in Documents (Peterborough: Broadview Press, in progress).

With Cindy Brown. Eds. A Cultural History of War in the Modern Period, 1920-2000 (London: Bloomsbury Academic Press, in progress).

Todd, Lisa M. “Prostitution, Medicine, and Health.” In “A Cultural History of Prostitution, Volume 6 – A Cultural History of Prostitution in the Modern Age, 1920-2000.” Edited by Jill S. Smith (London: Bloomsbury Academic Press, in progress).

With Jordyn Bailey and Allison Bennett. “Global Sexual Encounters with Racialized ‘Others’ in War, Genocide and Captivity, 1905-1945.” In “Enemy Encounters in Modern Warfare.” Edited by Holly Furneaux and Matilda Greig (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, anticipated 2023).

“‘Dishonorable’ Women and ‘Foreign’ Men: Illicit Sexuality as Challenge to the German Volksgemeinschaft, 1914-1918.” In Prisoners of War and Local Women in Europe, and the United States, 1914-1956: Consorting with the Enemy. Edited by Matthias Reiss and Brian Feltman. London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2022, 55-75.

“Studying Sexual and Racial ‘Mixture’: Eugen Fischer and the Rehoboth Basters of German Southwest Africa, 1908-1913.” In After the Imperialist Imagination: Two Decades of Research on Global Germany and its Legacies. Edited by Sara Pugach, David Pizzo, and Adam Blackler. Oxford: Peter Lang Publishing, 2020, 79-92.

“‘I ought not be married as a coloured person’: Rassenmischehen and Categories of Difference in 1920s Southwest Africa,” History/Sexuality/Law: Verschränkung von Recht und Sexualität im historischen Kontext, Free University of Berlin, 18 June 2020.

“The Enemy Lurking Behind the Front: Controlling Sex in the German Forces Sent to Eastern and Western Europe, 1914-1918.” In Expeditionary Forces in the First World War. Edited by Alan Beyerchen and Emre Sencer. London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2019, 79-110.

Sexual Treason in Germany during the First World War, Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2017.

"Shameful and Dangerous Women: Sexual Promiscuity in World War I Germany." In Not Straight from Germany: Sexual Publics and Sexual Citizenship since Magnus Hirschfeld . Edited by Michael Thomas Taylor, Annette F. Timm and Rainer Herrn, eds. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017.

“The Hun and the Home: Gender, Sexuality and Propaganda in First World War Europe,” in Troy Paddock, ed., World War I and Propaganda. Leiden: Brill Publishing, 2014.

“The Soldier’s Wife Who Ran Away with the Russian: Sexual Infidelities in World War I Germany,” Central European History, Vol. 44, no. 2 (2011): 257-278

Dr. Todd has published book reviews in Central European History, European History Quarterly, the Canadian Journal of History, German History, Journal of the History of Sexuality, the Canadian Historical Review, H-France Review, the Journal of Islamic Studies and the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies.

Recent research presentations

“Rassenschande: Racial and Sexual Segregation in German Southwest Africa and the Third Reich, 1904-1942.” To be presented on the panel “Holocaust Violence and Comparative Case Studies,” at the Lessons & Legacies of the Holocaust Biannual Conference, Ottawa, ON, 12-15 November 2022.

“Nazi Anti-Miscegenation Rhetoric and Petitions for Abortions on ‘Racial Grounds,’ 1940-41.” To be presented on the panel “’Racial Hygiene’ and Its Postwar Legacies: Disability and Gender, “at the German Studies Association Forty-Sixth Annual Conference, Houston, TX, 15-18 September 2022.

“The Soldiers Interfere with Our Women: Sexual Violence in German-Occupied Namibia, 1904-1908.” Presented as part of the panel “Global Sexual Encounters with Racialized ‘Others’ in War, Genocide and Captivity, 1905-1945,” at the Enemy Encounters Conference, hosted by the Imperial War Museum Institute for the Public Understanding of War and Conflict and the Cardiff University AHRC- funded project ‘Strange Meetings: Enemy Encounters 1800-2020,’ 19-21 July 2021.

“Studying Sexual and Racial ‘Mixture’ in the Shadow of Genocide: Eugen Fischer in German Southwest Africa, 1908.” Invited Lecture, Humanities and Social Sciences Visiting Scholar Series, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John’s, Newfoundland, 29 January 2020.

“War and Genocide in Southwest Africa: History and Memory in Namibia and Germany, 1904 to the Present.” Invited Public Lecture, Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society, in honour of Black History Month, Provincial Archives of New Brunswick, Fredericton, 20 February 2019.

The Nazi Persecution of Same-Sex Desiring Persons.” Invited Presentation to the Pride in Education Conference, for New Brunswick High School Students and Teachers, Wu Conference Centre, University of New Brunswick, 4 November 2018.

“The Dangers of ‘Racial Mixture’: Eugen Fischer, the Rehoboth Basters, and Studying Difference in German Southwest Africa, 1907-1913.” Invited Keynote Address at the Nineteenth Annual University of Maine / University of New Brunswick Graduate Student History Conference, Orono, Maine, 20 September 2018.

“An Enemy Lurking Behind the Front? Soldiers, Civilians, and ‘Sexual Treason’ in First World War Germany.” Invited Presentation to the Lunch Lecture Series of the Royal United Services Institute of New Brunswick (RUSI NB), Saint John, N.B., 24 May 2018.

“Controlling Sex in the German Expeditionary Forces.” Invited Paper at the Second International Symposium on Expeditionary Forces in the First World War, Knoxville College, Galesburg, IL, 27-29 April 2018.

“The Dangers of ‘Racial Mixture’: Eugen Fischer, the Rehoboth Basters, and Studying Difference in German Southwest Africa, 1907-1913.” Presented as part of the panel “Everyday Practices of ‘Race’: Creating and Disputing Hierarchies of Difference in Germany and Southwest Africa, 1900-1940,” at the German Studies Association Forty-First Annual Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, 5-8 October 2017.

“Purifying the Blood: Women Academics in the Nazi Killing Machine, 1937-1945.” Presented as part of the panel “Vulnerability or Complicity? Women and State Policies in War, Genocide, and Peace, 1930s-1960s,” at the Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting, Ryerson University, May 31-June 3, 2017.

“An Enemy Lurking Behind the Front? Soldiers, Civilians, and 'Sexual Treason' in First World War Germany.” Presented in the School of HASS Special Guest Seminar Series, at the University of New South Wales at the Australia Forces Defense Academy, Canberra, Australia, 21 April 2017.

“A Degeneration of the Higher Race: Anthropological Investigations of ‘Miscegenation’ in German Southwest Africa, 1908-1913.” Presented at the conference Race, Sex, and Reproduction in the Global South, c.1800-2000, at the Centre for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in the Global South and the Sydney Centre for the Foundations of Science, The University of Sydney, 18-19 April 2017.

Seminar Participant, “Writing Histories of Germans Abroad. Approaches and Methodologies to German Sources on the Global South,” at the German Studies Association Fortieth Annual Conference, San Diego, California, September 29th - October 2nd, 2016.

“Sexual Abstinence is Every Soldier’s Duty! Prostitution, Disease and Nationalism in First World War Germany.” Presented as part of the panel Damage Control: The History of Sexually Transmitted Infections in Germany and Canada 1914-1975 / Limiter les dommages: l’histoire des infections transmises sexuellement en Allemagne et au Canada, 1914-1975 at the Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting, University of Ottawa, May 31-June 3, 2015.

Graduate supervisions

Jordyn Bailey, “The Intimacy Frontline: Female Sexuality and the East German Ministry of State Security, 1950-1989,” Supervisor, PhD in History

Kate McGregor, “There is only one way to be pretty! Racialized Norms of Beauty in the Global German Empire, 1884-1939,” Supervisor, PhD in History

Allison Bennett, “Undressing the British Army in Southeastern Europe and the Middle East: Venereal Disease, Race, and Masculinities, 1914-1918,” Committee Member, PhD in History, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Alan Jones, “‘Juden Raus’: Global Responses to German Antisemitism and the “Swastika Epidemic” of 1959-1960,” Supervisor, Master of Arts in History, 2019

Emily MacPherson, “Contrasting Silences: Gender and the Public Memory of the Second World War in a Divided Germany, 1945-Present,” Supervisor, Master of Arts in History, 2019

Emily Wood, “Tracing the Destruction of Female Bodies: Survivor Testimonies of Menstruation in the Holocaust,” Supervisor, Master of Arts in History, 2019

Jessica Taylor, “Come and See What God Has Done: The Impact of Religious Violence on Sexual Violence in the Bosnian War,” Supervisor, PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies

Teaching

• HIST 1001: Past into Present (Module: Race, Sex and Empire)
• HIST 2103: Modern Europe, Part 1: 1789-1914
• HIST 2104: Modern Europe, Part 2: 1914 to the Present
• HIST 3025: History and Sexuality – Europe and the World
• HIST 3053: Berlin – From Empire to Republic (on location in Berlin, Germany)
• HIST 3085: Modern Germany, Part 1: 1871-1945
• HIST 3095: Modern Germany, Part 2: 1945 to the Present
• HIST 4012: Home Fronts at War: Europe 1914-1918
• HIST 4013: The Holocaust: Victims, Perpetrators, and Bystanders
• HIST 5007: Gender and Sexuality in 20th Century Europe (Honours Seminar)
• HIST 5035: The Holocaust (Honours Seminar)
• HIST 5900: The Nature of History (Honours Seminar)
• HIST 6025: Themes in Modern European History (Graduate Seminar)
• HIST 6925: Thinking History (Graduate Seminar)
• HIST 6935: Writing History (Graduate Seminar)