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The Gay Threat and the Nazi Imagination

KEENE, N.H., 1/28/2010 - Dr. Geoffrey Giles will present Keene State College’s Sidore Lecture, The Gay Threat and the Nazi Imagination, at 7 p.m. on Monday, February 1, in the Mabel Brown Room of the Student Center. This event is free and open to the public.

During World War II-era Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, thousands of homosexuals, primarily gay men, perished in concentration camps, along with millions of Jews and other victims, including Roma (Gypsies), Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the handicapped. Dr. Giles will look at what happened to homosexuals in Nazi Germany and explore what we can learn from this history with regard to homophobia in our culture today.

Geoffrey Giles received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Cambridge. Following four years as a postdoctoral fellow in a Yale University think tank, he has been a professor in the History Department at the University of Florida since 1978, where he specializes in German history. His book, Students and National Socialism in Germany, published by Princeton University Press, examines the attempts of the Nazi college students’ association to indoctrinate undergraduates. Dr. Giles continues to publish articles and book chapters on the history of education in Nazi Germany. Another of his specialties, the social history of alcohol in Germany, grew out of his work on students. Dr. Geoffrey Giles was one of the major advisors on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s traveling exhibition, Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals, which will be in the Student Center atrium conference room until February 9.

The Sidore Memorial Foundation and the Sidore Series have been established to support campus presentations by speakers presenting emerging ideas and to enhance faculty efforts to challenge students and the wider community to participate in dialogue around original and sometimes controversial issues facing society.

This event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Karen Cangialosi at 603-358-2578, kcangial@keene.edu.

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