Deconstructing Straight Citizenship

A Genealogy of Modern Danish Citizenship’s Heteronormative Foundations

Abstract

On November 25 2019, Danish historian Niels Nyegaard received the national KRAKA Award for an outstanding and innovative contribution to gender research in Denmark for his PhD dissertation Perverse criminals and good citizens: Homosexuality, heteronormativity and citizenship in Copenhagen’s public sphere, 1906-11. Nyegaard defended his dissertation at Aarhus University in the fall of 2018. The dissertation conducted a genealogical study of modern Danish citizenship’s heteronormative foundations in early-twentieth-century Denmark. In his acceptance speech, Nyegaard outlined the major conclusions from his dissertation. He further presented its Foucauldian and queer theoretical axioms and its genealogical contributions to contemporary discussions about sexual citizenship, heteronormativity, homonormativity and homonationalism.