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Prof Karl Toepferi from San Jose State University (USA) is visiting Tallinn University and giving a public lecture "Embodiments of sexual ambiguity in pair dancing of the Weimar Republic"

Abstract: In the early decades of the twentieth century, Germany was the center of European modern dance culture. The extraordinary achievements and diversity of this modern dance culture was overwhelmingly the work of women, who saw in dance unprecedented opportunities for a distinctly feminine contribution to the phenomenon of modernity.

In the female dominated dance culture of the Weimar Republic, it was male-female pair dancing that best revealed the power of dance to build an image of intermediary sexuality. To produce a convincing embodiment of “another sex,” it was necessary for the body of one sex to be the “partner” of a body of the other sex, because within the idea of partnership was the implication that one body would “feminize” or “masculinize” the other to create a new and presumably more desirable sexual identity. This was a unique insight of the Weimar dance culture, an insight that contributed to making German dance much more modern and audacious than modern dance anywhere else in the world.

Bio: Karl Toepfer has taught at San Jose State University since 1983, the same year he received his doctorate in Theater Arts from UCLA. He also received his BA from UCLA, as well as an MA from San Jose State University. Before entering graduate school, he was a production assistant for Fanfare Films in Hollywood, served as a cinematographer and photographer in the U.S. Army, and worked for Dart Industries. At SJSU, he was Graduate Coordinator for the Theater Arts Department for many years before serving as Director of Productions for two years. He then served as Associate Dean for the College of Humanities and the Arts from 2001 to 2004. From 2004 to 2012, he was Dean for the College of Humanities and the Arts.

He has published numerous scholarly articles in performing arts journals, includingTDR, Scandinavian Studies, Comparative Literature, and The Journal of the History of Sexuality. He has published three scholarly books: ; ; and . His scholarship has also appeared several anthologies, most recently in  (2012), Fashion in Film (forthcoming 2013), Metropolzauber (forthcoming 2013), and the online Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism (forthcoming 2014). He appears with the singer Marianne Faithfull in an episode of the BBC television series , airing on September 18, 2013. He has been involved with University initiatives related to gaming and education, online delivery of curriculum, and projects designed to enhance technological proficiency in the humanities. A number of his video lectures on contemporary theatre are available on .