CGF Seminar - The performative effects of diagnosis: gender, intimacy, and being a war veteran with PTSD

Sebastian Mohr, Center for Gender Studies, Karlstad University 

Abstract: This presentation will explore the performative effects of being diagnosed with PTSD in Danish war veterans’ intimate and sexual lives. Based on biographical interviews with veterans from Denmark, the focus is on how medical diagnoses interplay with veterans gendered and sexualed self-perceptions leading to changes in how they enter and live intimate relationships. 

Bio: Sebastian Mohr is senior lecturer in gender studies at Karlstad University. He graduated from Humboldt University, Berlin in 2010, and received his PhD from the University of Copenhagen in 2014. As an ethnographer he is interested in how gender, sexuality, and intimacy interplay with (reproductive) technologies and (bio)medicine, (military) socialization and education, and national identity. His forthcoming book Being a sperm donor: masculinity, sexuality, and biosociality in Denmark (Berghahn: https://berghahnbooks.com/title/MohrBeing) explores Danish sperm donors’ lives as they are reformulated through the logics and politics of reproductive biomedicine.