Trans Studies: Cultures and Communities (GEND30007)

This subject charts the emergence of transgender studies, situating gender and sex in conceptual frameworks that have contributed to the development of this dynamic academic field. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, we will ask questions such as: What does the term ‘trans’ mean? Is it an identity, a methodology, or both? How has the development of trans studies reconceptualised feminist and queer understandings of gender, sex, and power? Throughout the subject, we will examine a wide range of issues related to trans and non-binary subjectivities, including representation, recognition, pathologisation, and visibility, and will analyse how gender is controlled, confined, and policed by structural institutions (e.g., the legal system, the medical establishment, the prison industrial complex).

In focusing on the experiences and lived realities of trans and gender-diverse communities, we will keep in mind the intersectional nature of identity and will be attentive to how race, class, age, nationality, and dis/ability structure and inform understandings of sex and gender. Attention will also be paid to movement of transgender subjectivities across transnational spaces. Throughout the semester, we will also interrogate what is at stake in including ‘T’ in LGBT as well as critical trans scholarship’s relationship to queer theory and feminism.