“The Ugly and the Beautiful: Cosmetics, Feminism and Punk”

Event PosterUta Poiger
Professor of History
Northeastern University

Thursday, March 19, 2015
4:00 PM
L140 Elvehjem Building

The working group on the new materialism is thrilled to welcome Professor Uta Poiger to UW-Madison on March 19th for a lecture and roundtable discussion. Uta Poiger is Professor of History and Dean of the College of Social Sciences and Humanities at Northeastern University. Her scholarship examines 20th-century German culture and society in a transnational perspective, with a focus on race, gender, Americanization, globalization and imperialism. She is the author of Jazz, Rock and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany, published in 2000 and a co-editor of The Modern Girl Around the World: Modernity, Consumption, Globalization, published in 2008.

Professor Poiger’s current work investigates the relationship between the multinational cosmetics industry and international discourses on beauty and health. Her talk, ‘The Ugly and the Beautiful: Cosmetics, Feminism and Punk’ is drawn from her current project on beauty and business in Germany, and will explore the place of cosmetics in feminism and punk.

Roundtable, 12.20pm March 19, Curti Lounge

Professor Poiger’s visit will also include a roundtable, which will provide an exciting forum for discussion with this leading scholar in the field of modern cultural history. The conversation will focus on the themes and methodologies of her most recent project: the cosmetics industry in a transnational twentieth-century context. Professor Poiger’s recent book article ‘Beauty, Cosmetics, and Vernacular Ethnology in Weimar and Nazi Germany’ will be pre-circulated later this week.