Department of English

While mainstream conversations tend to frame “transgender” as a perpetually new phenomenon, this introduction to trans studies will contextualize present-day gender expansiveness within a longer intellectual history. We will be guided by the following questions: What does trans mean and how has its meaning been shaped by regimes of gender, race, colonization, ability, and medical and legal regulation? What are the main concerns of trans studies/activism, particularly in relation to more established academic fields? How have trans artists, activists, and scholars imagined other, more just worlds? By engaging with scholarship from multiple fields as well as a range of creative work, we will consider the emergence of “transgender” as both an object of knowledge and a way of knowing.