SHUM 6688 - Trans Studies at a Crossroads

(crosslisted) ASRC 6688, FGSS 6688, LGBT 6688

Spring. 3 credits. Student option grading.

Enrollment limited to: graduate students. Co-meets with ASRC 4688/FGSS 4688/LGBT 4688/SHUM 4688.

K. Amin.

This advanced seminar centers underthought fissures within the field of Trans Studies. These fissures take the form of failed crossings between incommensurable positions. We will examine: the vexed relation between queer theory and Trans Studies, between the field’s analytic of “transing” and its originary focus on transgender people, between the specific violence faced by Black trans women and the possibility that Blackness itself might be para-ontologically trans; between turns to historical materialism and to new materialism, between understandings of gendered selfhood in the West and in the non-West; and between transmasculine and transfeminine experiences and heuristics. This seminar encourages students to view such failed crossings as generative sites in which future scholarship might take root.