معرفی
Dr. Yanara Schmacks is a Researcher at the Institute for History at the University of Bremen, Department of Social Sciences, where she has been working since April 2025. Her position focuses on modern and contemporary history with a specialization in gender history and the history of sexuality.
Education:
- PhD in History from the Graduate Center, City University of New York (2025)
- MPhil in History from the Graduate Center, City University of New York (2021)
- MA in History from the Graduate Center, City University of New York (2020)
- Master's in Interdisciplinary Antisemitism Research from Technische Universität Berlin (2018)
- Bachelor's in Liberal Arts & Sciences from University College Maastricht (2015)
Dr. Schmacks' research focuses on the intersections of gender, sexuality, and political ideologies in German history. Her work examines how gender and sex structure political and moral debates, particularly in the context of Nazi Germany, the GDR, and Cold War history. Her dissertation explores motherhood and reproduction as lenses to understand German history during and after the Cold War, revealing how efforts to confront the Nazi past, growing concerns about 'nature' and 'health,' and the contentious process of reunification intertwined with motherhood policies in all three German states. Her new research project investigates the history of anti-communism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, focusing on how fantasies and fears around sexuality and gender, as well as anti-Slavic racism, shaped Western European perceptions of Eastern Europe and Russia throughout the 20th century.
Her publications show a consistent focus on gender politics, the history of sexuality, and the intersections of these fields with political ideologies. Her work often examines how seemingly private matters like motherhood and sexuality become sites for negotiating larger moral and political controversies. The articles reveal a historian deeply engaged with questions of memory, identity, and the ways in which gender structures political discourse across different historical contexts.
Scientific Awards:
- Summer Research Grant from the Central European History Society (2024)
- Stipendium from the Leibniz Institute for European History (2023-2024)
- Konrad Jarausch Essay Prize for Advanced Graduate Students in Central European History (2022)
- Honorable Mention for the Annelise Thimme Article Prize (2022)
- Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies Dissertation Fellowship (2022-2023)
Dr. Schmacks has received substantial research funding throughout her academic career, including multiple fellowships from the Graduate Center, CUNY (Provost's Fellowship 2018-2025, The Graduate Center Fellowship 2018-2022 and 2024-2025), the Mina Rees Library Fellowship (2021-2022), and the Provost's Pre-Dissertation Summer Research Fellowship (2021). She has taught courses on National Socialism & the Holocaust, as well as the history of sexuality in the 19th century, where she examines how categories of 'sexuality' and 'gender' became historically constructed and how they shaped modern social orders.
Her work contributes significantly to our understanding of how gender and sexuality have been central to political formations and historical processes, particularly in German history, and demonstrates the value of interdisciplinary approaches that combine history, gender studies, and political analysis.
