Introducing Samuel Huneke

Please welcome our newest Foreign Exchanges contributor!

Hello everybody, it’s Derek. It’s been a little while since we had a new column around here and longer since we had the chance to welcome a new contributor, so I’m particularly pleased to announce that Samuel Huneke is joining us here at Foreign Exchanges! If you’re an American Prestige listener then Sam needs no introduction. In fact we just recorded the final episode in his mammoth series earlier this week. For those who aren’t familiar with his work, he’s penned a short introduction below.

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Hello! I’m excited to be writing for Foreign Exchanges. My thanks to Derek for the invitation to do so.

My name is Samuel Clowes Huneke, and I am assistant professor of history at George Mason University. My research and teaching focus on modern European and modern German history as well as the history of gender and sexuality. In addition to my scholarly publications, I write frequently for non-academic venues, including New Republic, Boston Review, and LA Review of Books.

Those who listen to American Prestige may already know me from the series “Queer Germany,” which traces my first book, States of Liberation: Gay Men between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany. The book examines gay persecution and activism in both East and West Germany, tracing their evolution from the end of the Second World War up to the present. I’m also the author of A Queer Theory of the State, an examination of how queer theory has traditionally conceptualized state power, and I am currently at work on a history of queer women in Nazi Germany.

For Foreign Exchanges, I will write on issues concerning Germany and Europe as well as contemporary queer politics. My first piece, coming soon, will look at the scandal around Yuroslav Hunka in the Canadian parliament, offering readers a brief history of the Waffen-SS and its crimes.