Ms. Gabrielle Higgins

Professional Background

Gabrielle Higgins is a doctoral student of history at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. She holds a master’s in European history, politics, and society from Columbia University’s European Institute and bachelor's degrees in history and studio art from Elmira College. Prior to her arrival at the Strassler Center, Higgins worked as the Program Coordinator of the Center for Holocaust, Human Rights, and Genocide Education in New Jersey. 

Higgins's research examines patriarchal, white supremacist, and colonial gazes as they converged to envision a utopic “Aryan” male body in Nazi Germany. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, her dissertation will consider how National Socialists utilized art, film, and other media to illustrate an idealized male figure, which was constructed in opposition to the abjected bodies of those deemed “Other.” Through her research, Gabrielle works toward a better understanding of Nazism’s relationship to the broader scope of European colonialism, Social Darwinism, and eugenic body politics. 

Fellowship Research

While at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a Summer Graduate Student Research Fellow, Higgins will work on her project, “Imaginary Bodies: Gendered and Colonial Subtexts in Nazi Children's Media.” Utilizing the Museums extensive collection of Nazi-era children’s books, games, toys, and films, she will examine how Nazi children’s media encouraged young Germans to think of their bodies as extensions of a nation whose destiny was to seek and dominate new land. Her project will consider how these materials endowed the ideal “Aryan” male body, exemplified by militaristic hyper-masculinity, with the qualities of the colonizer–and the body of the “Other” with the qualities of the colonized.

Residency Period: June 1, 2024–August 31, 2024