Registration for in-person attendance is at maximum capacity! You can view this event starting at 5:30pm at https://duke.is/9wgpf. This event is also being recorded and will be posted on our website! Jules Gill-Peterson is a Research Associate Professor of History at the Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Histories of the Transgender Child (University of Minnesota, 2018), winner of a Lambda Literary Award and the Children's Literature Association Book Award. Jules has previously held an ACLS Fellowship, was awarded the Chancellor's Distinguished Research Award from the University of Pittsburgh, and is a General Co-Editor of Transgender Studies Quarterly. She is currently at work on two book projects: Gender Underground: A History of Trans DIY and A Brief History of Trans Femininity.
Talk Title: "Queer Theory Killed Venus Xtravaganza: What's Trans About Queer Studies Now?" For decades, we've told ourselves a story of the relationship of queer studies to trans studies that takes the form of bad blood: "evil twins," queer siblings, rivals, or perhaps successorship and futurity. This talk returns to the alleged falling-out in the mid 1990s in Judith Butler's work, as well as contemporary trans critiques of Eve Sedgwick, to propose an alternative reading: that both fields were founded on the destruction of trans womanhood. Neither, therefore, can claim to have a leg up on the other; rather, both might learn to see trans womanhood as an important resource for thinking anew about gender and sexuality.
