Date: Friday, Feb 12
Time: 7pm
Admission: $12 (Tickets here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2490455)
Books will be available for sale and signing; complementary Trinity Absinthe provided by our sponsor Overland Distillery

Come celebrate Valentine’s Day with Morbid Anatomy and our favorite rogue scholar Mel Gordon as we commemorate the release of his new book Horizontal Collaboration: The Erotic World of Paris, 1920-1946 with a highly illustrated lecture devoted to the world of prostitution in Paris, The City of Pleasure up until German occupation during World War II.

“Horizontal Collaboration” is the term given to sexual liaisons between French civilians and German occupiers from 1940 to 1944. These were extremely widespread and included individual wartime relationships in addition to prostitution. Gordon reclaims the term to express something much broader: French men and women “horizontally collaborated” to overcome all social obstacles, divisions, and regulations. These obstacles include married and unmarried couples, straights and homosexuals, foreigners and locals, gun-toting soldiers and their vanquished subjects. The natural yearning for sexual pleasure equally corrupted all cohabitating partners.

Mel Gordon is the author of Erik Jan Hanussen: Hitler’s Jewish Clairvoyant,Grand Guiginol: Theatre of Fear and Terror, Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin, and many other books.Voluptuous Panic was the first in-depth and illustrated book on the topic of erotic Weimar; The lavish tome was praised by academics and inspired the establishment of eight neo-Weimar nightclubs as well as the Dresden Dolls and a Marilyn Manson album. He also teaches directing, acting, and history of theater at University of California at Berkeley.

Image: Rudolf Matouschek, The League of Nations in Paris, 1927; from Horizontal Collaboration: The Erotic World of Paris, 1920-1946 with Mel Gordon.

Tickets are non-refundable unless the event is canceled.