SST Trans Studies Reading Group

The ASU School of Social Transformation is excited to host two sessions of the SST Trans Studies Reading Group during the Spring 2024 semester. The reading group is an informal place for ASU faculty and graduate students to discuss scholarship in Trans Studies alongside contemporary transgender politics and art. Participants will discuss two to three peer-reviewed articles or book chapters in the field of Transgender Studies each meeting.

While the reading group began as an intellectual community within SST in 2023, the reading group is now open to the wider CLAS community at ASU to bring together scholars who produce interdisciplinary knowledge, literature, and art in Trans Studies. This group also serves as a foundation for future cross-campus collaborations, symposia, and events in this critical research area.

Lunch provided for registered attendees (capped at 20).

April 4, 2024 from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Arizona time

In-person only - location provided upon registration.

A PDF sample of the readings that will be discussed will be shared upon registration. 

Theme: Black Feminism in Transgender Studies

This reading group session explores the tensions and possibilities for comingling black feminism and trans feminism. The rise of black trans feminism as a set of theoretical interventions and a political project within Transgender Studies and Black Studies has fostered new understandings and ruptures of racialized gender and transness in both fields. Gender Studies scholar, Che Gossett writes that "blackness is gender trouble and [that] blackness troubles gender" (2017). We will discuss two key texts in black trans studies that demonstrate the various ways that black feminism and trans feminism are constitutive in U.S. and diasporic iterations.