Black Trans Futurities: Political Imaginaries in the Academy & the Arts - Public Plenary

Che Gossett 

Che Gossett is a Black non binary writer and critical theorist specializing in queer/trans studies, aesthetic theory, abolitionist thought and black study. From May 2021-May 2024 they were the Racial Justice Postdoctoral Fellow at the Initiative for a Just Society, Columbia Law School. Che was also a visiting fellow at Harvard Law School, in the Animal Law and Policy Program from 2022-2024. Che received their doctorate in Women's and Gender Studies from Rutgers University, New Brunswick in May 2021. They received a BA in African American Studies from Morehouse College, an MAT in Social Studies from Brown University, an MA in History from the University of Pennsylvania and were a 2019-2020 Helena Rubenstein Fellow in the Whitney Independent Study Program.  Che received a Ruth Stephan Fellowship from Beinecke Library at Yale University for the summer of 2022, to research the papers of queer feminist filmmaker Barbara Hammer. Che has been a fellow at the Centre for Life Writing at Wolfson College, Oxford University, as well as the Centre for Visual Culture and Corpus Christi College at the University of Cambridge.

Currently Che is finishing two manuscripts for Duke University Press -- the first being a political biography of AIDS activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya, and the second emerging out of their dissertation, theorizing the ways in which abolition is activated in Black contemporary art.  Che has co-edited a special issue of TSQ  "Trans in a Time of HIV/AIDS" with Professor Eva Hayward, and their syllabus on trans and non-binary methods for art and art history co-authored with Professor David Getsy won the College Art Journal Award for Distinction.  For the fall semester of 2023 they are in residence as assistant professor/visiting scholar at the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

K. Marshall Green 

Kai Marshall Green is a shape-shifting Black Queer Feminist nerd; an Afro-Future, freedom-dreaming, rhyme slinging dragon slayer in search of a new world; a scholar, poet, facilitator, filmmaker; and an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at The University of Delaware. He earned his Ph.D. from the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity with specializations in Gender Studies and Visual Anthropology at the University of Southern California. He is completing his memoir, A Body Made Home: They Black Trans Love (The Feminist Press). He is a proud founding member of Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100). Instagram and Twitter: @drDrummerBoiG

LaVelle Ridley 

LaVelle Ridley is Assistant Professor of Queer/Trans* Studies in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University. Dr. Ridley’s research and teaching interests meet at the intersection of queer and transgender studies, Black feminisms, and literary and cultural studies of racialized gender and sexuality. Through life writing, film, and media, she observes how trans women of color use imagination critically to transform the world at large. She is currently working on her first book project, tentatively titled Imagining Freedom: Critical Trans* Imagination in Black Trans Life Narratives which articulates how black trans women life writers such as Janet Mock, CeCe McDonald, and Venus Selenite engage in political freedom-making through their life narratives.

Dr. Ridley also engages in interdisciplinary collaboration in academic and community spaces, particularly around prison abolition, oral history, and understanding the cultural philosophies of queer and trans people of color. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Feminist Studies, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, and TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, the latter for which she serves as Book Reviews Editor. Dr. Ridley is also coediting the forthcoming anthology Paradise on the Margins: Worldmaking by Trans Women of Color.

Dr. Ridley is the recipient of the 2023-2024 University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship. She has received additional grants and awards for her scholarship and community-engaged work from the University of Michigan, Rackham Graduate School, the Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture in Harlem, and the Miss Major Alexander L. Lee TGI Justice Project Black Trans Cultural Center in San Francisco. Dr. Ridley currently serves on advisory/steering committees for several academic organizations and projects that promote trans studies scholarship, public humanities work, and interdisciplinary feminist collaboration. She has served in some administrative capacity for national conferences such as the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA), the Transgender Media Lab housed at Carleton University, and the TEN:TACLES (Transgender Educational Network: Theory in Action for Creativity, Liberation, Empowerment, and Service) Initiative, a $1.5 million Mellon Foundation-funded initiative started by trans historian Susan Stryker to bring trans-oriented humanities and cultural studies scholarship to bear on practices of social transformation.

When not elevating the stories of queer and trans people of color or doing community-engaged work, Dr. Ridley enjoys hobbies of watching anime, engaging in spiritual practice, and crafting rainbows out of all kinds of materials. These rainbows—made of flowers, lace, paint, etc.—symbolize Dr. Ridley’s personal pledge to always advocate for the well-being of marginalized youth, especially queer and trans youth, youth of color, and first-generation students.

SA Smythe 

Dr. SA Smythe is a critical theorist, transmedia storyteller, and educator committed to Black belonging beyond genres and geographies. They are assistant professor of Black Studies & the Archive and Director of the Collaboratory for Black Poiēsis at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information. Smythe is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies, serving on advisory boards including the 2nd International Trans Studies Conference, punctum books, BAND Gallery (Poetry & Performance), Italian Culture, Imagining Black Europe and Momentary Futures in Black Studies. Smythe is editor of Troubling the Grounds: Global Configurations of Blackness, Nativism, and Indigeneity (vols. 1&2) (Postmodern Culture), Transnational Black Studies (Liverpool University Press), and author of Where Blackness Meets the Sea: On Crisis, Culture, and the Black Mediterranean (forthcoming) and [proclivity], a poetry collection and transmedia installation/sound-performance suite. Recipient of the 2021-22 Rome Prize for Modern Italian Studies and numerous composer/artist fellowships and residencies including the Leighton Studios at Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity and a MacDowell Fellowship in Multimedia Installation, Smythe’s transmedia artwork has been featured internationally in collaborative and solo exhibitions, installations, and festivals. For decades, Smythe has organised with literary/performance, abolitionist, and migrant support collectives across Turtle Island, Europe, and the Mediterranean.

Sa Whitley (moderator) 

Sa Whitley is an Assistant Professor of Women & Gender Studies in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. Whitley is also the Co-Director of the Queer X Humanities Initiative at the ASU Humanities Institute. They received a Ph.D. in Gender Studies from UCLA. Whitley’s research projects explore black and LGBTQ housing-justice movements, queer financial subjectivities, and the politics of black urban land reclamation and architectural preservation. Their current book manuscript has been supported by the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women and the Dartmouth Society of Fellows. Whitley’s recent scholarly writing is available or forthcoming in TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly and Antipode: A Journal of Radical Geography. Whitley is also an award-winning poet and contributor to the literary arts. They are a Cave Canem Fellow and the winner of the 2024 Indiana Review Poetry Prize. Their recent poems appear or are forthcoming in POETRY Magazine, Ninth Letter, Palette Poetry, and Paperbag. Whitley also participated in the 2023-2024 Poetry & the Senses Fellowship with the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley and the ASU Center for Imagination in the Borderlands.