Cover illustration of Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis courtesy of Algonquin Books, 2020.
Historian Jeffrey H. Jackson will discuss his new book Paper Bullets (Algonquin Books, 2020), documenting the exciting true story of an audacious anti-Nazi campaign undertaken by a lesbian couple, Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe. Better remembered today by their artist names, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, these avant-garde artists spent their formative years in Paris creating shocking photographs that undermined gender roles. After the Nazis occupied the British Channel Island of Jersey, where the women made their home, they drew on their creative skills to write and secretly distribute “paper bullets”—notes replete with wicked insults against Hitler, calls to rebel and subversive fictional dialogues designed to demoralize the occupying troops. Devising their own psyhcological-operations campaign, they slipped their notes into soldiers’ pockets or tucked them inside newsstand magazines. Betrayed and captured by the secret police, they were executed after months of imprisonment in 1944.
SPEAKERS
Jeffrey H. Jackson is professor of history at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. An expert on European history and culture, he is the author of Paris Under Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910 and Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris. He has appeared in documentary films and helped develop "Harlem in Montmartre: A Paris Jazz Story" for PBS’s Great Performances.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE
This event will take place online. After you register, you will receive a confirmation email with a link and instructions on how to join the Zoom webinar as an attendee. The event will also be livestreamed on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/GLBTHistory/ and then archived on our YouTube page at https://bit.ly/2UyGVbG.
ADMISSION
Free | Suggested donation of $5.00
Register online here: https://bit.ly/2FZD7eW
The event is limited to 500 attendees.
ASL INTERPRETATION
ASL interpretation provided upon request. Please write at least three days in advance of event to leigh@glbthistory.org.
ABOUT THE BOOK
For more information about Paper Bullets: Two Artists Who Risked Their Lives to Defy the Nazis, visit the publisher’s website here: https://www.workman.com/products/paper-bullets.
JOIN THE GLBT HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Become a member of the GLBT Historical Society for free museum and program admission, discounts in the museum shop and other perks: www.glbthistory.org/memberships.