You are here: American University College of Arts & Sciences Philosophy & Religion Thinking Trans // Trans Thinking Conference

Thinking Trans // Trans Thinking Conference

October 5-6, 2018
American University

Contact Us

Battelle Tompkins, Room 120 on a map

Philosophy / Religion 4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW Washington, DC 20016-8056 United States

Back to top

Thinking Trans // Trans Thinking

Over the past two decades, with the publication of The Transgender Studies Reader 1 and 2 (2006; 2013) and TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, transgender studies has quickly become a prominent interdisciplinary field. While disciplines such as history, literature, and visual arts have made significant contributions to this emerging field, philosophy has yet to clarify its role within transgender studies. The aim of this conference will be to continue to explore what might be called “trans philosophy”—that is, philosophical work that is accountable to and illuminative of transgender experiences, histories, cultural production, and politics.

For session, keynote, and other conference details, please see:
2018 Conference Schedule & Locations

Keynote Speakers

Mel Y. Chen

Mel Y. Chen is Associate Professor of Gender & Women's Studies and Director for the Center for the Study of Sexual Culture at the University of California, Berkeley.

Che Gossett

Che Gossett is a theory queen, writer, archivist at Barnard Center for Research on Women and PhD candidate in Trans/Gender Studies at Rutgers University.

Schlegel Legion of Honor Awardee

Eli Clare

White, disabled, and genderqueer, Eli Clare lives near Lake Champlain in occupied Abenaki territory (currently known as Vermont) where he writes and proudly claims a penchant for rabble-rousing.

Related Links

Sponsors

Generously sponsored by the American Philosophical Association, Hypatia, American University (Center for Diversity and Inclusion; College of Arts and Science Dean’s Office; Department of Philosophy and Religion; Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program; and the Office of Campus Life), and University of North Carolina, Charlotte (Department of Philosophy, Women and Gender Studies Program, Center for Professional and Applied Ethics, and Center for Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Studies).

Steering Committee

Talia Mae Bettcher, Loren Canon, Tamsin Kimoto, Amy Marvin, Andrea Pitts, and Perry Zurn.

American University’s Department of Philosophy and Religion in the College of Arts and Sciences is honored to host the Thinking Trans Conference and welcomes participants to AU’s campus.

Friday at Spring Valley Building

8:30-9:00
Breakfast
9:00-9:15
Opening Remarks
9:15-10:30

Round Table:
Trans Politics, Theory, and History

Talia Mae Bettcher, California State University, Los Angeles
Loren Cannon, Humboldt University
Miqqi Alicia Gilbert, York University
C. Jacob Hale, California State University, Northridge

Moderator: Salvador Vidal-Ortiz (American University)

10:45-12:00

Session 1:
Curiosity, Spectacle, and Desire

“The Chaser Continuum”
Amy Marvin, University of Oregon

“Puzzle Pieces: Shapes of Trans Curiosity”
Perry Zurn, American University

“Loving Curiosity”
Grayson Hunt, University of Texas, Austin

Moderator: Ellen Feder (American University)

12:00-1:00
Lunch
1:00-2:15

Workshop A:
Mapping and Contextualizing Black, Queer, and Trans Resistance in North Carolina

Ash Williams, Independent Scholar
Tommi Hayes, Independent Scholar

2:30-3:45

Session 2: Coloniality, Migration, and Diaspora

“Quareca Forty: Transing Chacha-Warmi at the Crossroads of Coloniality and Transgender”
Pedro Di Pietro, Syracuse University

“Keeping Chosen Families Together: Social Death, Trans Life, and the Politics of Migration”
Andrea Pitts, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

“Loving Trans-ly: Postcolonial and Diasporic Gendered Becoming”
Aqdas Aftab, University of Maryland, College Park

Moderator: Iván Ramos (University of Maryland)

Friday at Katzen Arts Center

“TBD”

Mel Y. Chen is Associate Professor of Gender & Women's Studies and Director for the Center for the Study of Sexual Culture at the University of California, Berkeley. Their first book, Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect (Duke UP 2012, MLA Alan Bray Award), explores questions of racialization, queering, gendering, disability, and affective economies in animate and inanimate “life” through the extended concept of animacy. Chen’s current book project, Chemical Intimacies, concerns relationships among the conceptual territories of toxicity and intoxication and related histories of the shared interanimation of race and disability with particular attention to gender and materiality. Elsewhere, Chen writes on slowness, gesture, inhumanisms, and cognitive disability and method. Chen co-edits a book series entitled “Anima” at Duke University Press and is part of a small and sustaining queer of color arts collective in the Bay Area.

“Abolitionist Entanglement: Blackness, Trans Aesthetics, and Ending the Grammars of Capture”

Che Gossett is a theory queen, writer, archivist at Barnard Center for Research on Women and PhD candidate in Trans/Gender Studies at Rutgers University. Their work has been published on sites such as LA Review of Books, Verso and Frieze as well as in anthologies such Trap Door (MIT Press, 2018), Queer Necropolitics (Routledge, 2014) and they are the recipient of various awards and fellowships, most recently as a Palestine American Research Center Fellow for 2017-18. They are also an NY Queer Art Mentor for 2018-19.

Richard L. Schlegel National Legion of Honor Award Ceremony

Visionary Leader: Eli Clare

White, disabled, and genderqueer, Eli Clare lives near Lake Champlain in occupied Abenaki territory (currently known as Vermont) where he writes and proudly claims a penchant for rabble-rousing. He has written two books of creative non-fiction, Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure (2017) and Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation (1999), and a collect of poetry, The Marrrow’s Telling: Words in Motion (2008), and has been published in many periodicals and anthologies. Eli speaks, teaches, and facilitates all over the United States and Canada at conferences, community events, and colleges about disability, queer and trans identities, and social justice. Among other pursuits, he has walked across the United States for peace, coordinated a rape prevention program, and helped organize the first ever Queerness and Disability Conference. When he’s not writing or on the road, you can find him reading, hiking, camping, riding his recumbent trike, or otherwise having fun adventures.

At Katzen Arts Center's Abramson Family Recital Hall.

Saturday at Mary Graydon Center

8:30-9:00
Breakfast
9:00-10:30

Session 3: Racializing Trans

“The Unbearable Whiteness of Genderqueerness Under Neoliberalism”
Yannik Thiem, Villanova University

"Territorialization as Sex-Gender Differentiation"
Cecilio M. Cooper, Northwestern University

“Trans Necropolitics: Leelah Alcorn, Transgender Suicide, and the Political Economy”
Eli Erlick, University of California, Santa Cruz

Moderator: Nabina Liebow (American University)

10:45-12

Session 4: Trans Metaphysics

“Liberatory Relational Trans Identity”

Sam Sumpter, University of Washington

“Psyches that Matter”
Zoe Belinsky, Villanova University

"Beyond Binary: Genderqueer as Critical Gender Kind"
Robin Dembroff, Yale University

Moderator: Asia Ferrin (American University)

12:00-1:00
Lunch
1:00-2:30

Session 5:
Law, Medicalization, and Methodology

“Autogynephilia”
Fiona Maeve Geist and Nihils Rev, Independent Scholars

“Ugly Laws, Black Codes, and Cross-Dressing Arrests”
Max Thornton, Drew University

“Telling Our Stories, Preserving Our Communities”
Julian Honkasalo, University of Helsinki

“Trans Scapegoating”
Loren Canon, Humboldt University

Moderator: Brielle Anderson (American University)

2:45-4:00

Session 6: Trans Embodiment

"Fat Trans of Color Subjectivity: Moving Toward the Abject in Merleau-Ponty"

Brooklyn Leo, Pennsylvania State University

“Trans* Technologies”
Ricky Frawley, Utrecht University

“Fracturing the Present: Trans Feminine of Color Temporalities”
Tamsin Kimoto, Emory University

Moderator: Juliana Martínez (American University)

4:15-5:15

Workshop B:
Trans Activism and Higher Ed

Talia Mae Bettcher, California State University, Los Angeles

Andrea Pitts, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
Perry Zurn, American University
Mitch Boucher, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Moderator: Gail Weiss (George Washington University)

5:15-5:30

Closing Remarks