His Left Foot: Joseph Goebbels and the Uses of Disability
Anne Finger discusses the tropes of disability in the Third Reich.
Historian Douglas C. Baynton wrote that “disability is everywhere in history, once you begin looking for it, but conspicuously absent in the histories we write.” The exception that proves the rule is the historical and popular treatment of Nazi minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels’s “club foot,” which, rather than being conspicuously absent, is conspicuously present in popular and historical writings about Goebbels. In this talk, Anne Finger considers how tropes of disability have been marshaled in discussions of Nazism in an attempt to paint it as monstrous and devilish, rather than having links to more widespread currents of anti-Semitism, white supremacy, and eugenics.
Meet the speaker
Anne Finger, based in Oakland, CA, is a writer of creative nonfiction and fiction. She earned her BA at Harvard University, and MA at Stanford University. In 2016, Finger was the Kate Welling Distinguished Scholar in Disability Studies at Miami University; she has also taught at Wayne State University and the University of Texas at…
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