Rate My Professor Barbara Hales

Barbara Hales, Ph.D., is a Professor of History in the College of Human Sciences and Humanities at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. She earned an M.A. in History from Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, an M.A. in German Studies from the University of Arizona, and a Ph.D. in Comparative Cultural and Literary Studies from the University of Arizona. Her research centers on German film and culture, gender, eugenics, euthanasia, and medical ethics during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. Hales has received research grants from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) to conduct archival work in Germany and has presented lectures such as "The Female Undead in Weimar Culture." She also explores topics like women and euthanasia in Nazi asylums, including the Eglfing-Haar Asylum and the film Ich klag an (1947).

Hales began her tenure at the University of Houston-Clear Lake as Assistant Professor of History in 2005, advancing to Associate Professor in 2011 and Professor in 2022. She was awarded the University of Houston-Clear Lake 2005 International Education Award for outstanding contributions to international initiatives. Presently, she is President of the Center for Medicine After the Holocaust Houston. Key publications include her monograph Black Magic Woman: Gender and the Occult in Weimar Germany (Peter Lang, 2021), which examines occultism and gender in interwar culture. She edited Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Cinema (Berghahn Books, 2020), featuring essays on Jewish representations in Weimar films. Other works comprise Cinematically Transmitted Disease: Eugenics and Film in Weimar Germany (Berghahn Books, 2023) and the article "Taming the Technological Shrew: Woman as Machine in Weimar Culture" (Neophilologus, 2009). Through these scholarly contributions, Hales has advanced the understanding of cinema's role in disseminating eugenics, gender ideologies, and cultural narratives in Weimar and Nazi Germany, impacting film studies, cultural history, and Holocaust-related research.