The German American Heritage Center presents “Fashioning Women in the Third Reich" -- May 23.
Sunday, May 23, 2 p.m.
Presented by the German American Heritage Center
One of the most horrific periods of modern history will be explored through unique and specific avenues when Davenport's German American Heritage Center hosts the virtual program Fashioning Women in the Third Reich, in which award-winning historian Irene Guenther, on May 23, will look at the rise of fascism through the fascinating prism of couture.
In Nazi Germany, female fashioning was political. If it is true that clothes are “a poster for one’s act,” then the Third Reich put several fashion posters on display – the folk costume (Tracht), the uniform, the latest modern fashion tied to international trends, or an often conflicting conglomeration thereof. While examining the Third Reich through the window of women’s clothing may seem revelatory, clothing served as a means to visibly convey many of the notions spewed by the Nazis’ propaganda machine. Women’s clothing was utilized to support and implement Nazi gender ideology and anti-Semitism. It was employed to enhance the power and status of the regime, as well as to consolidate society and manipulate behavior. Additionally, women’s clothes provided a tangible sign of inclusion in and exclusion from the racially-constructed national community. What women wore or were required to wear and how they chose to fashion themselves spoke volumes in Nazi Germany.
Presenter Guenther specializes in 20th-century American and European history, and she received her doctorate from the University of Texas. Her teaching interests include genocide and human rights, the construction of ‘race’ and the consequences of systemic racism in the United States, Nazi cultural policies, and comparative Second World War home fronts. Guenther has published on the Nazi takeover of the German-Jewish fashion industry; the contested politics of women’s clothing in the four occupied zones of Germany after World War II; Magical Realism from 1920s Germany to 1940s Latin America; and the German anti-war artists of the First World War. Her first book Nazi “Chic”? Fashioning Women in the Third Reich, won the Costume Society of America’s Millia Davenport Award for “best fashion history book: of the year and the Sierra Prize, given by the Western Association of Women Historians. Her second book, Postcards from the Trenches: A German Soldier’s Testimony of the Great War, was published in late 2018 and was accompanied by a centennial exhibition of World War I soldiers’ art, which traveled to Washington, DC, Houston, New York, and Berlin. Among Guenther's professional accolades are the Ross Lence Teaching Award, the Wong Student Engagement Award, the Lerner Family Faculty Award, the Honors College Dean’s Master Teacher Award, and the UH Provost’s Teaching Excellence Award.
Guenther's virtual program Fashioning Women in the Third Reich will be presented at 2 p.m. on May 23, a limited number of in-person seats will be available for the viewing, and donations to the free event are greatly appreciated. For more information, call (563)322-8844 and visit GAHC.org.
