Armanc Yildiz

ARMANC YIDLIZ, then a graduate student at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, was awarded a grant in August 2020 to aid research on ‘Educating the Other: Sexuality, Race, and Political Economy in the Humanitarian Industries of Germany,’ supervised by Dr. George Meiu. Among experts, Germany is usually offered as a ‘good example’ in discussions of sex education, as it is compulsory by law in primary and secondary schools. However, the kind of sex education offered depends on the local states and is often challenged by multiple political actors. Usually framed as a matter of liberals vs. conservatives, the discussion misses the racializing effects of the discourse around sex education in practice. While sex educators employ a language of universality by emphasizing that they impart ‘scientific knowledge,’ the values they articulate in the classroom are products of specific historical and political economic forces. Especially during the so-called ‘refugee crisis,’ sex educators and their beneficiaries have also questioned such values sharply. Foregrounding the history of race and sexuality from the colonial German Empire to the present, this dissertation ‘ retitled ‘Pedagogies of Flesh: Sexuality, Race, and Value in the Sex Education of Postcolonial Germany’ — ethnographically examines the tensions between universality and liberalism in sex education. It identifies the subject positions sex education produces and renders normative in Germany. Visiting sex education classes, NGO offices, sex education trainings for sex educators, and newspaper archives, this dissertation explores how sex education racializes different social groups amid ongoing crises of German national identity.