“‘I am jeopardizing everyone wherever I go, as a man or as a woman, it doesn’t make any difference’: Toward a Trans* History of the Holocaust”
Professional Background
Noë Bourdeau is a doctoral student of history at Carleton University. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in social science, with a dual concentration in feminist and gender studies and Jewish studies, from the University of Ottawa. His Master’s degree in religion and public life is also from Carleton University. Bourdeau’s research has focused on thinking with and beyond identity to consider how sexuality, emotions, agency, and power appear in Holocaust memory and (re)presentation. His previous research has outlined the diachronic history of radical antisemitism in the German public sphere through a close analysis of representations of Jewish masculinity and sexuality in select Stürmer-Verlag illustrations.
Additionally, Bourdeau is the acting secretary for the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies/Association d’études juives canadiennes and has been employed on research projects, such as “Hear Our Voices: Holocaust Survivors Share their Stories of Trauma and Hate” and “Populist Publics: Memory, Populism, and Misinformation in the Canadian Social Mediascape.”
Fellowship Research
While at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a Summer Graduate Student Research Fellow, Bourdeau will be working on his project, “‘I am jeopardizing everyone wherever I go, as a man or as a woman, it doesn’t make any difference’: Toward a Trans* History of the Holocaust.” This project bridges the fields of Holocaust studies and transgender studies to foreground the role of gender mutability during the Third Reich and Shoah.
Drawing on select written memoirs and oral history interviews, such as the Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive, Bourdeau employs the methodological approach of trans* analysis to demonstrate how gender nonconformity works in Holocaust memory and (re)presentation. Bourdeau hopes to resurface stories and aspects of stories obscured within current methodological frameworks and enhance understanding of how gender variance appears in situations characterized by emotion, choice, and risk.