Call for Papers for Edited Volume –Trans Studies: Beyond
Hetero/Homo Normativities
The Institute for Research at Women at Rutgers University invites
submissions for an edited volume entitled, Trans Studies: Beyond
Hetero/Homo Normativities, which we anticipate publishing at a
university press.
Currently at the cutting edge of interdisciplinary scholarship,
Trans Studies have undermined pre-existing, oppositional sex/gender
binaries by focusing on the fluidity and malleability of gender
identity and expression. Trans Studies therefore destabilize and
complicate many of the debates about the social, biological and
cultural constructions of gender and sexuality. There has also been
a heated debate among scholars and activists—especially in the
United States and Latin America—on the distinctions between
transgender, transsexual and transvestite, and the ways in which
each one of these terms interrogates scientific, artistic, popular,
cultural and ethnic definitions of gender and sexuality based on the
idea of a set spectrum, or conceived as a result of a particular
performance or practice. Scholars and activists who work on trans
issues are currently analyzing the social, psychological, and legal
impact of surgical gender reassignment, as well as promoting the
protection of legal rights for trans people in public spaces. The
proposed edited volume would like to address this topic as an
exploration of the new frontiers that are open when the
relationships between gender, sexuality and the body are not
conceived within heteronormative or homonormative frameworks, but
from the perspective of psychoanalysis and desire, philosophy and
subject theory, law and civil rights, cultural and social studies
and issues of representation, and sociological and political science
debates on social imaginaries and political radicalism.
This volume will encourage a broad conversation about the most
recent redefinitions in Women’s, Queer and Sexuality Studies in
dialogue with debates in Trans Studies. Possible topics might
explore:
- The relationship between identity, desire and the body
- The relationship between feminist theory, queer theory and trans
theory; the ways in which Trans Studies have transformed Feminist
and Queer Studies
- The performativity of gender and sexuality
- The history of gender as social and scientific construct
- The relationship between LGB and T in movement politics,
nationally and internationally
- The relationship between trans studies and transnational studies;
migration, queer and trans rights; trans tourism
- The possibility of translating trans identities beyond territorial
borders
- Queer linguistics; the challenge of capturing fluid conceptions of
gender identity and expression in language; of terminology and its
associated politics (e.g. transgender, transgendered or trans;
intersex or DSD); of exporting/transposing nomenclature between
different national contexts
- HIV infection and trans people
- The most pressing medical/social/legal/public policy issues
affecting trans people
- The role of intersectional oppression (e.g. race, ethnicity,
class, sexuality) in the field of Trans Studies
- Sexual rights as human rights, especially rights related to gender
identity and gender expression
The volume will be edited by Dr. Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel and Dr.
Sarah Tobias (bios below). Please send abstracts of 200 – 300 words
accompanied by a C.V. to [log in to unmask] by May 15, 2012.
Full text articles should be ready no later than May 15, 2013.
Dr. Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel is a cultural critic and literary
theorist. She works on issues of sexuality and gender in the
production of knowledge and cultural representations in Latin
American colonial and Caribbean postcolonial literature and
discourse. Her other areas of research and teaching interest include
Colonial Latin American discourses and contemporary Caribbean and
Latino narratives, migration and cultural studies. Professor
Martínez-San Miguel is the author of Saberes americanos:
subalternidad y epistemología en los escritos de Sor Juana
(Pittsburgh: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana,
1999), Caribe Two Ways: cultura de la migración en el Caribe insular
hispánico (Ediciones Callejón, 2003) and From Lack to Excess:
'Minor' Readings of Colonial Latin American Literature (Lewisburg:
Bucknell UP, 2008). She is currently working on her fourth book
project entitled Coloniality of Diasporas: Rethinking Intra-Colonial
Migrations in a Pan-Caribbean Context, a comparative study on
internal Caribbean migrations between former/actual metropolis and
colonies, to question transnational and postcolonial approaches to
massive population displacements and their cultural productions. She
is the director of the Institute for Research on Women and holds a
joint appointment in Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Literature and
Comparative Literature. She has an M.A. and Ph.D. in Latin American
Cultural Studies from the University of California at Berkeley and a
B.A. in Hispanic Studies from the University of Puerto Rico.
Dr. Sarah Tobias is a feminist theorist and LGBT activist whose work
bridges academia and public policy. She is co-author of Policy
Issues Affecting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Families
(University of Michigan Press, 2007) and author of "Several Steps
Behind: Lesbian and Gay Adoption" in Sally Haslanger and Charlotte
Witt (eds.), Adoption Matters: Philosophical and Feminist Essays
(Cornell University Press, 2005), as well as co-author and editor of
numerous policy-related reports and articles. She is currently
working on a book project tentatively entitled Queering Democracy.
Dr. Tobias is Associate Director of the Institute for Research on
Women and affiliate faculty in the Women's and Gender Studies
Department at Rutgers. Prior to joining the Institute in January
2010, she spent over 8 years working in the nonprofit sector and
also taught at Rutgers-Newark, the City University of New York
(Baruch College and Queens College), and Columbia University. She
has a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University and an
undergraduate degree from Cambridge University, England.
--
Marlene Importico, Office Manager
Institute for Research on Women
Rutgers the State University of New Jersey
160 Ryders Lane
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
732/932-9072; 732/932-0861 (FAX)
http://irw.rutgers.edu
“We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same"
*Carlos Casteneda*