Xiaojue Michelle Zhu

Thesis title: The ‘Criminal’ Other?: The Politics of Citizenship in the Visual Culture of the Weimar Republic

Supervised by Professor Dorothy Price and advised by Dr Robin Schuldenfrei

Funded by the CHASE AHRC Doctoral Studentship and the Courtauld Scholarship

My research examines images of non-normative bodies in the Weimar Republic from an intersectional perspective and considers their relationship with law and the concepts of citizenship and criminality. My research questions are two-fold. I’m interested in how representations of the criminal influenced and negotiated the changing notions of and borders between normality and deviance, morality and degeneration, inclusion and exclusion, citizens and Others, and vice versa. I also focus on the agency of subaltern counterpublics and explore how they formulated their self-representations in response to or despite their de jure and de facto oppression and its corresponding visual constructs. My research foregrounds close analyses of primary visual materials and contextualises them in relation to other historical documents. On the one hand, I examine images of the criminal and the Other in artworks, the popular press, scientific publications, films, and public spectacles to highlight the power of circulated images in shaping public discourses. On the other hand, I pay close attention to productions by cultural practitioners of the subaltern counterpublics to emphasise their agency in managing their self-images.

By applying art historical methodologies to studying the intertwined histories of law, gender, sexuality, and race, I hope that my research will not only foreground the pivotal role of visual culture in shaping political-legal debates and forming counterpublics’ identities, but also offer insights into the contexts and politics of artistic productions in interwar Germany.