Tom Smith 🏳️‍🌈

@tomsmithgerman

Lecturer, writer, mostly German and queer stuff, some radio, lots of music 🎶 he/him 🍉

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Tom Smith 🏳️‍🌈@tomsmithgerman· Apr 17

Celebrating voting with some rainbow sparkle cake. #VoteQueer #ScottishElections2026

Strangely small-looking hand (bad perspective!) dropping a postal ballot in a red postbox with Leith Walk tenements in the background.

Slice of pink and yellow marble cake with rainbow sprinkles, cappuccino and glass of water on a white table top.

Tom Smith 🏳️‍🌈@tomsmithgerman· Sep 6

Went to the launch of Kwaidan, an exhibition of prints by Irish and Japanese artists inspired by Lafcadio Hearn's ghost stories. Curated by Claire Marsland at Ushaw College, brought to Durham by Fraser Riddell @durham-university.bsky.social and conceived by Stephen Lawlor and Kieran Owens.

Tom Smith 🏳️‍🌈@tomsmithgerman· Aug 11

V late bc summer, but am excited my article "Desire, Sex and Surveillance" is out in the fab volume Socialist Subjectivities @uofmpress.bsky.social. It's a queer methods piece from my archival work on East German queer soldiers in the Stasi files. Open access: press.umich.edu/Books/S/Soci...

First page of my chapter with title Desire, Sex and Surveillance: Queer Methods and the Stasi's Files on the East German Military by Tom Smith. Opening paragraph reads: Researching East Germany’s armed forces, I often encounter reminders of how queerness can be overlooked in memories around straight-centered institutions, when people remain incredulous or advise that “back then it
wasn’t an issue.” Josie McLellan has also commented on straight East German interviewees’ lack of awareness about queer compatriots. As decades of scholarship have shown, however, queerness was widely discussed and negotiated by queer and straight people throughout the lifetime of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Straight people spent time and effort developing policies and processes within the state’s institutions to understand, limit, and regulate queer sexuality, although archives often say more about what institutions failed to know. Queer East Germans were active participants in socialist institutions, shaping them in small, everyday ways. They may even have intended for traces of queerness to recede from view. As José Esteban Muñoz reminds us, the ephemeral nature of queer evidence has often had a protective function. Against the backdrop of the GDR’s heterosexual norms around how lives unfold, queer methods allow insights into traces of intimacy and community in official documents, showing soldiers developing queer East German subjectivities and life trajectories through their military service.

Cover of Socialist Subjectivities: Queering East Germany under Honecker. White and green lettering on black background. Editors Scott Harrison, Jeff Hayton and Katharine White. Picture showing glass window reflecting Berlin architecture while someone on a ladder mounts advertising for the 40-year anniversary of the GDR on the window.

Contents page with intro by Scott Harrison, Jeff Hayton and Katharine White. Articles listed by Mary Fulbrook, Markus Wahl, Katharine White, Tom Smith, Catrina de Rivera, Kyrill Kunakhovich, Scott Harrison, Larissa R. Stiglich (continued in next image)

Second half of contents page listing articles by Mor Geller, Briana J. Smith, Jeff Hayton, Julia E. Ault, Timothy Scott Brown and an epilogue by Eli Rubin.

Tom Smith 🏳️‍🌈@tomsmithgerman· Jan 28

Stopped off at St Athernase's Church in Leuchars on way home after a lovely first day back after the break - really remarkable Norman apse and also important family connection for me. 😊

Exterior of a church with a rounded apse with an octagonal tower - part of the nave reconstructed but the east end still with Norman carvings and decorative arches.

Tom Smith 🏳️‍🌈@tomsmithgerman· Jan 23

OK, I'll bite. Points to anyone who can guess this one.

Suspension bridge on the horizon with dark green forest in the foreground.

Suspension bridge in the bright sunshine

The same suspension bridge at sunset from the water with the sun reflecting on the water.

Tom Smith 🏳️‍🌈@tomsmithgerman· Nov 17

Wee North Sea coast escape 🥰

The moon and it's beam of light on the water around the rocks on the coast with a calm sea

A red and white fishing boat tied up in a harbour with large disused stone lime kilns behind

Tom Smith 🏳️‍🌈@tomsmithgerman· Oct 19

Autumn in Edinburgh 😊

Tom Smith 🏳️‍🌈@tomsmithgerman· Aug 12

Art by Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell in Berwick Church in Sussex 🌈⛪️🌄 #BloomsburyGroup

Large stained glass arch window with altarpiece below it with a row of five wooden arches framing a painting of Sussex countryside with a rainbow.

Mural above the arch of the inside of a church, facing the altar, showing Jesus in the centre with three military figures kneeling on the left and church figures on the right. Dark wooden beams supporting the white-painted ceiling.

Tom Smith 🏳️‍🌈@tomsmithgerman· Aug 7

Excited this is out! Such a joy to share a section with @elizabethward.bsky.social and @kyfrack.bsky.social, and to be able to tag them both here, unlike on Tw*tter(!) My chapter uses trans theory to explore the army's 'binary panic' around women soldiers. www.berghahnbooks.com/title/AllanD...

Screenshot of opening of my article, "A Woman's Work? Women Soldiers, Masculinities and Binary Panic in Documentaries of the East German Army".

Cover of Documenting Socialism: East German Documentary Cinema, edited by Sean Allan and Sebastian Heiduschke. Sepia image of people outside a cinema with the sign DEFA Zeitkino.

Tom Smith 🏳️‍🌈@tomsmithgerman· Aug 7

Trying to recommit to this place as the other place gets worse and worse. Sorry to have been rubbish on here so far. Here's a rainbow over Berlin to make up for it 🥰

Rainbow and blue cloudy skies over Berlin with the TV tower and Deutsches Historisches Museum in the foreground.

Tom Smith 🏳️‍🌈@tomsmithgerman· Nov 13

Fabulous to catch @benwritesthings.bsky.social and Elif Saydam at the Gropius Bau in Berlin talking around the General Idea exhibition. As Ben says, this may be the best GI retrospective ever, so get over to see it if you can!

Tom Smith 🏳️‍🌈@tomsmithgerman· Oct 26

Posting a picture of the castle in the autumn sun because I can't post about the latest thing my work has done to make me upset and despairing...

Edinburgh castle against a pale blue sky, with the grassy slope below lit up in the sunlight and the left of the castle rock in shadow.

Tom Smith 🏳️‍🌈@tomsmithgerman· Oct 11

It was such a pleasure to be invited to Scripps College to talk about my work on queer of colour art in Germany's club scene. It's a difficult time to be talking about the politics of dance music, and I'm so grateful to everyone for a reflective, generative discussion. #techno #Berlin #queerstudies

Me in a flowery shirt in front of an audience in conversation with two students. My thank you slide with a club picture with bright blue light is behind us.

Tom Smith 🏳️‍🌈@tomsmithgerman· Oct 10

Tfw you've arrived in SoCal and woken up in a Hockney painting 🤩

Modernist buildings against a blue sky. In the foreground, a glass cube sits in the middle of a square pond. To the right, low, rectangular cloisters stretch into the distance, and a larger building frames the courtyard at the back.

Tom Smith 🏳️‍🌈@tomsmithgerman· Oct 5

Oh hai bluesky - first post from the riverfront in Montreal for the GSA 🤩 Bonjour hi tout le monde!