#TransJusticeSyllabus

2021

Compiled by:

Rosalind Kichler, Derek P. Siegel, and Carey Jean Sojka, with additional support from Liam Oliver Lair, Jen Reck, and Davida Schiffer

Contact Information:

Should you want to contribute to the syllabus or have any questions, please contact sociologistsfortransjustice@gmail.com.

About the Syllabus:

In society today, we are presented with a paradox of sorts: on one hand, there have been significant social and political advances regarding sexual orientation and gender identity. Yet, on the other hand, with increasing visibility and progress, there is also a simultaneous and almost inevitable increase in the backlash targeting the most vulnerable segments of the LGBTQ population – trans and non-binary people, and particularly trans and nonbinary communities of color. In 2020, at least 44 trans people in the U.S. lost their lives to fatal violence, the majority of whom were Black transgender women including Monika Diamond, Nina Pop, Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells, and Riah Milton. Additionally, trans people experience social, economic, and political marginalization due to the lack of legal representation, violence in public spaces, barriers to gender-affirming healthcare, legal name and gender changes, as well as other seemingly neutral administrative systems that force people into narrow binary categories of gender in order to get their basic needs met. It is clear that racism, sexism, classism, ableism, heterosexism, and cissexism intersect in ways that shorten the lives of trans people.

The #TransJusticeSyllabus seeks to uplift the work of trans Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (TBIPOC) scholars and centering scholarship on the intersections of racial justice and trans justice, much of which emerges from work resisting anti-Blackness and colonization. The term TBIPOC is meant to include all Black trans people, Indigenous trans people, and all other trans people of color (i.e., Latinx trans people and Asian trans people) We chose to use the term TBIPOC instead of TPOC to acknowledge the ways in which Black and Indigenous people’s unique experiences of violence and cultural erasure differ from other people of color’s experiences of marginalization. This decision was based in part on scholars’ and activists’ use of the term QTBIPOC.

To learn more about how the #TransJusticeSyllabus differs from the other resources available on this site (such as the Trans Studies Bibliography), please click here. This page will also review how to properly cite the syllabus and to integrate it into your course.

We would like to acknowledge those who were able to help inspire, compile, and adapt this syllabus. Thank you to everyone who submitted recommendations to the committee, to everyone who was part of Sociologists for Trans Justice who contributed to this version of the syllabus, and to the American Sociological Association for their support.

A Note on Accessibility, Logic, and Design:

We recognize that students come from a variety of backgrounds and have different experiences within the higher education system that may bar their full participation and access to our courses. As such, we provide links to all materials. Whenever possible, we link to free, open-access resources. For those without institutional access to academic journals, we recommend searching Trans Reads.

We also recommend considering ways of making the content and structure of courses more accessible to students, as disabilities can be both visible and invisible, and formal accommodations can be difficult to acquire. Additional resources regarding accessible syllabi and practicing pedagogy can be found here: Accessible Syllabus and here: Trans Inclusive Classrooms.

In organizing this syllabus, we recognize the sections we have provided are not the typical sections you would expect to find in a transgender studies syllabus. We chose themes that we felt captured central debates in trans studies without isolating trans traumas from a broader context of trans joy, resilience, and life. Please read the section descriptions for more information about how we conceptualized these section titles, and feel free to use and adapt as you would like. As such, some articles are occasionally listed twice throughout the syllabus as they are relevant to more than one content area/debate. At the end of the syllabus we also include a list of non-academic organizations engaged in crucial work and theorizing on the intersection of trans liberation and racial justice.

The Syllabus

Click here to download a pdf of the syllabus.

TransJusticeSyllabus

Trans of Color Theorizing

While race, gender, and sexuality have traditionally been separate spheres of study, TBIPOC scholars and scholarship offer intersectional analyses that center their lived experiences and speak back to trans studies, queer studies, gender studies, and other disciplines. These selected readings reconfigure our understanding of language, categories, history, power, and more.

Aizura, Aren Z., Marcia Ochoa, Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, Trystan Cotten, Carsten Balzer/Carla LaGata (Eds.). 2014. Decolonizing the Transgender Imaginary [Special Issue]. Transgender Studies Quarterly 1(3).

Bey, Marquis. 2017. “The Trans*-ness of Blackness, The Blackness of Trans*-ness.” Transgender Studies Quarterly 4(2):275-295.

binaohan, b. 2014. decolonizing trans/gender 101. Toronto: biyuti publishing.

Boellstorff, Tom, Mauro Cabral, Micha Cárdenas, Trystan Cotten, Eric A. Stanley, Kalaniopua Young, & Aren Z. Aizura. 204. “Decolonizing Transgender: A RoundTable Discussion.” TSQ 1(3):419-439.

Cruz, Louis Esme, and Qwo-Li Driskill. 2010. “Puo’winue’l Prayers: Readings from North America’s First Transtextual Script.” GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies 16(1-2): 243-252.

de Vries, Kylan Mattias. 2015. “Transgender People of Color at the Center: Conceptualizing a New Intersectional Model.” Ethnicities 15(1):3-27.

de Vries, Kylan Mattias and Carey Jean Sojka. 2020. “Transitioning Gender, Transitioning Race: Transgender People and Multiracial Positionality.” International Journal of Transgender Health,

Driskill, Qwo-Li. 2016. Asegi stories: Cherokee queer and two-spirit memory. Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press.

Fisher, Simon D. Elin. 2016. “Pauli Murray’s Peter Panic: Perspectives from the Margins of Gender and Race in Jim Crow America.” TSQ 3(1-2):95-103.

Frank, Jillian, “The Anti-Trans Bathroom Nightmare Has Its Roots in Racial Segregation,” Slate 10 Nov 2015.

Gill-Peterson, Julian. 2018. “Trans of Color Critique Before Transsexuality.” TSQ 5(4):606-620.

Green, Kai M. 2013. “‘What the Eyes Did Not Wish to Behold’: Lessons from Ann Allen Shockley’s Say Jesus and Come to Me.” South Atlantic Quarterly 112(2):285–302.

Matika Wilbur & Adrienne Keene. 2019. “Episode #6: Indigiqueer” from All My Relations Podcast

Ndopu, Edward. 2013 (Jan. 2). “Musings from a Queercrip Femme Man of Color.” BlackGirlDangerous.

Pyle, Kai. 2018. “Naming and Claiming: Recovering Ojibwe and Plains Cree Two-Spirit Language.” Transgender Studies Quarterly 5, no. 4 (2018): 574-588.

Reichard, Raquel. 2015 (Aug. 29). “Why We Say Latinx: Trans & Gender Non-Conforming People Explain.” Latina.

Rizki, Cole.2019. “Latin/x American Trans Studies: Toward a Travesti-Trans Analytic.” Transgender Studies Quarterly 6(2):145-155.

Smalls, Shanté Paradigm, & Elliott H. Powell. 2019. “Introduction, An ImPossibility: Black Queer and Trans* Aesthetics.” The Black Scholar 49(1):1-5.

Snorton, C. Riley. 2011. “ Transfiguring Masculinities in Black Women’s Studies.” The Feminist Wire.

Snorton, C. Riley. 2017. Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity. University of Minnesota Press.

Tinsley, Omise’eke Natasha, & Matt Richardson. 2014. “From Black Transgender Studies to Colin Dayan: Notes on Methodology.” Small Axe 18(3):152–61.

Towle, Evan B., and Lynn M. Morgan. 2002. “Romancing the Transgender Native: Rethinking the Use of the ‘Third Gender’ Concept.” GLQ 8(4):469-497.

Feminisms

While feminism and trans liberation may seem like natural allies, sharing a commitment to gender equality, their relationship is somewhat fraught. Since the 1970s, feminists have debated whether trans people are “good” for feminism or advance its goals. Trans people, in part through the development of transfeminism, assert their own theories of gender and inequality, carving out multiple visions of trans liberation that both converge with and depart from other feminists.

“African Trans Feminist Charter.” 2016. TSQ 3(1–2): 272-275.

Awkward-Rich, Cameron. 2017. “Trans, Feminism: Or, Reading Like a Depressed Transsexual.” Signs 42(4):819-841.

Bettcher, Talia M. and Susan Stryker (Eds.). 2016. Trans/Feminisms [Special Issue]. Transgender Studies Quarterly 3(1-2).

Bey, Marquis. 2016. “The Shape of Angels’ Teeth: Toward a Blacktransfeminist Thought through the Mattering of Black(Trans)Lives.” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 5(3):33-54.

Buchanan, Blu, & Ayotunde Khyree Ikuku. 2020. “We Major: Black Trans Feminism Fights Back.” In Black Feminist Sociology: Praxis and Perspectives. New York: Routledge Press. [Forthcoming]

Camminga, B. “Disregard and Danger: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and the Voices of Trans (and Cis) African Feminists.” The Sociological Review 68, no. 4 (July 2020): 817–33.

Chaudhry, V. Varun. 2019. “Trans/Coalitional Love-Politics: Black Feminisms and the Radical Possibilities of Transgender Studies.” TSQ 6(4):521-538.

Green, Kai, & Marquis Bey. 2017. “Where Black Feminist Thought and Trans* Feminism Meet: A Conversation.” Souls 19(4):438-454.

Green, Kai M. 2015. “The Essential I/Eye in We: A Black TransFeminist Approach to Ethnographic Film.” Black Camera 6(2):187–200.

Ideadestroyingmuros. 2009. “Manifiesto para la insurreccion transfeminista” Blogspot.

Koyama, Emi. 2006. “Whose Feminism Is It Anyway? The Unspoken Racism of the Transgender Inclusion Debate.” Pp. 698-705 in The Transgender Studies Reader, edited by S. Stryker and S. Whittle. New York:Routledge.

Krell, Elias C. 2017. “Is Transmisogyny Killing Trans Women of Color? Black Trans Feminisms and the Exigencies of White Femininity.” Transgender Studies Quarterly 4(2):226-42.

Mitchell, Koritha. 2020. “ Black Feminists Are Mobilizing for Trans Women.” Bitch.

Namaste, Viviane. 2009. “Undoing Theory: The ‘Transgender Question’ and the Epistemic Violence of Anglo-American Feminist Theory.” Hypatia 24(3):11-32.

Raha, Nat. 2017. “Transfeminine Brokenness, Radical Transfeminism.” South Atlantic Quarterly, 116(3):632-646.

Santana, Dora Silva. 2019. “Mais Viva!: Reassembling Transness, Blackness, and Feminism.” TSQ 6(2):210–222.

Thom, Kai Cheng. 2016. Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir. Montréal, QC: Metonymy.

Stay Alive, Fight Back: Imagining Trans Futures

This week, we focus on the resistance and resilience of people and communities to multiple forms of violence and the ways TBIPOC folks survive and thrive in the midst of and in response to violence. Instead of separating trans history from trans activism, this section envisions TBIPOC legacies of struggle, resistance, and resilience alongside the context of current activism, with both past and present building of trans futures.

Bassichis, Morgan, Alexander Lee, and Dean Spade. 2013. “Building an Abolitionist Trans and Queer Movement with Everything We’ve Got.” Pp. 653-667 in The Transgender Studies Reader 2, edited by S. Stryker and A. Aizura. New York: Routledge.

Dharmadhikari, Sanyukta. 2018. “Equal to killing us”: Why India’s transgender community rejects trans bill.”

Edidi, Dane Figueroa. 2017. “For Black Trans Girls Who Gotta Cuss a Motherf***** Out When Snatching An Edge Ain’t Enough.”

Gan, Jessi. 2007. “’Still at the Back of the Bus’: Sylvia Rivera’s Struggle.” Centro Journal 19(1):124-139.

Gossett, Che. 2014. “We Will Not Rest in Peace: AIDS Activism, Black Radicalism, and Queer and/or Trans Resistance.” Pp. 31-50 in Queer Necropolitics, edited by J. Haritaworn, A. Kuntsman, & S. Posocco. New York, NY: Routledge

Hunter, Lourdes Ashley. “Every Breath a Black Trans Woman Takes is An Act of Revolution.”

Jackson, Sarah L., Moya Bailey, and Brooke Foucault Welles. 2017. “#GirlsLikeUs: Trans Advocacy and Community Building Online.” New Media & Society 20(5):1868-1888.

Pyle, Kai. 2019. ““Women and 2spirits”: On the Marginalization of Transgender Indigenous People in Activist Rhetoric.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 43(3): 85-94.

Rivera, Sylvia. 1973. “Y’all Better Quiet Down” Speech. https://vimeo.com/234353103

Rivera, Sylvia. 2007. “Sylvia Rivera’s Talk at LGMNY, June 2001 Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, New York City.” Centro Journal 19(1):117-127.

Roberts, Monica. 2019. “Moni’s Thoughts On The NCTE Mess.” TransGriot.

Ruff, Nadine, Amy B. Smoyer, & Jean Breny. 2019. “Hope, Courage, and Resilience in the Lives of Transgender Women of Color.” The Qualitative Report 24(8):1990-2008.

Snorton, C. Riley. 2009. “A New Hope”: The Psychic Life of Passing. Hypatia, 24(3):77-92.

Stone, Amy L., Elizabeth A. Nimmons, Robert Salcido Jr., Phillip W. Schnarrs. 2019. ““Multiplicity, Race, and Resilience: Transgender and Non‐Binary People Building Community.” Sociological Inquiry.

Sumerau, J. E., & Grollman, Eric Anthony. 2018. Obscuring Oppression: Racism, Cissexism, and the Persistence of Social Inequality. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 4(3), 322-337.

The Philadelphia Inquirer. 2019. “Legendary: 30 Years of Philly Ballroom .” YouTube.

TransJustice. 2006. “Trans Day of Action for Social and Economic Justice.” Pp. 227-230 in Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology, edited by INCITE! Women of Color against Violence. Cambridge: South End Press.

Untorelli Press. 2013. Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries: Survival, Revolt, and Queer Antagonist Struggle. Untorelli Press.

Willis, Raquel. 2019. “Black Trans Women Are Solving the Epidemic of Violence, Support Us.” Essence.

Willis, Raquel. 2020. “I Was Born for This Time: Angelica Ross is Black, Trans, and Fearless.” Interview Mag.

Nation and Citizenship

These selected readings (re)conceptualize nation, belonging, and citizenship from trans perspectives. They also review how colonization, the policing of borders, and the criminalization of migration impact trans, intersex, and gender diverse people.

Bhattacharya, Sayan. 2019. “The Transgender Nation and its Margins: The Many Lives of the Law.” South Asian Multidisciplinary Academic Journal. Online.

Collier, Megan, and Meghan Daniel. 2019. “The Production of Trans Illegality: Cisnormativity in the U.S. Immigration System.” Sociology Compass 13(4).

Harper, Phillip Brian, Anne McClintock, Jose Esteban Munoz, and Trish Rosen. 1997. “Queer Transexions of Race, Nation, and Gender: An Introduction.” Social Text 52-53(15):1-4.

Luibheid, Eithne & Karma Chávez. 2020. “Queer and Trans Migrations: Dynamics of Illegalization, Detention, and Deportation.” Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Morgenson, Scott Lauria. 2010. “Settler Homonationalism: Theorizing Settler Colonialism Within Queer Modernities.” GLQ 16(1-2):105-131.

Mount, Liz. 2020. “‘I Am Not Hijra’: Class, Repectability, and the Emergence of the ‘New’ Transgender Woman in India.” Gender & Society 34(4): 620-647.

Puar, Jasbir K. 2007. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Rifkin, Mark. 2012. The Erotics of Sovereignty: Queer Native Writing in the Era of Self-Determination. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Stauffer, Brian. 2016. “Abuses Against Transgender Women in U.S. Immigration Detention.” Human Rights Watch.

“Know Your Rights Manual for the Transgender Community: Immigration Law.” 2013. National Lawyers Guild.

InQueery. 2018. What Does “Two Spirit” Mean? Them.

The Trouble with Whiteness

In the context of this bibliography as one that uplifts racial and Indigenous justice through trans studies scholarship, this week focuses on the relationships between trans lives, trans studies, and whiteness. The critical approach of these articles toward whiteness challenges the normative position of whiteness and troubles the production and reproduction of white supremacy.

Abelson, Miriam. 2016. “‘You Aren’t From Around Here’: Race, Masculinity, and Rural Transgender Men.” Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 23(11): 1535-1546.

Harmony, Princess. 2016. “ How White Trans Women Repelled Me From Trans Day of Remembrance.” Black Girl Dangerous.

Koyama, Emi. 2006. “Whose Feminism Is It Anyway? The Unspoken Racism of the Transgender Inclusion Debate.” Pp. 698-705 in The Transgender Studies Reader, edited by S. Stryker and S. Whittle. New York: Routledge.

Lamble, Sarah. 2008. “Retelling Racialized Violence, Remaking White Innocence: The Politics of Interlocking Oppressions in Transgender Day of Remembrance.” Sexuality Research and Social Policy 5(1):24-42.

Meadow, Tey. 2017. “Whose Chosenness Counts? The Always-Already Racialized Discourse of Trans – Response to Rogers Brubaker.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 40(8):1306-1311

Muñoz, José Esteban. 1997. “‘The White to Be Angry’: Vaginal Davis’s Terrorist Drag.” Social Text 52/53: 80-103.

Noble, Bobby Jean. 2006. “Our Bodies Our Not Ourselves: Tranny Guys and the Racialized Class Politics of Embodiment.” Pp. 76-100 in Sons of the Movement: FtMs Risking Incoherence on a Post-Queer Cultural Landscape. Toronto: Women’s Press.

Patel, Nigel. 2017. Violent Cistems: Trans Experiences of Bathroom Space. Agenda 31(1):51–63.

Roen, Katrina. 2002. “Transgender Theory and Embodiment: The Risk of Racial Marginalisation.” Journal of Gender Studies 10(3):253-263.

Schueller, Malini Johar. 2005. “Analogy and (White) Feminist Theory: Thinking Race and the Color of the Cyborg Body.” Signs 31(1):63–92.

Stewart, D.L., and Z Nicolazzo. 2018. “High Impact of [Whiteness] on Trans* Students in Postsecondary Education.” Equity and Excellence in Education 51(2):132-145.

Vidal-Ortiz, Salvador. 2009. “The Figure of the Transwoman of Color Through the Lens of ‘Doing Gender.’” Gender & Society 23(1):99-103.

The Many Arms of the U.S. Carceral State

This week, we consider the impact of policing and prison on TBIPOC in the United States. While many articles focus on the prison itself, the carceral state is defined broadly to include the policing activities of other state entities. These articles demonstrate the hyper-policing of TBIPOC, as well as considering alternatives to the carceral state.

Abi-Karam, Andrea. 2015. “There is no such thing as prison reform: An interview with CeCe McDonald.” Open Democracy.

BCRW Videos. 2014 (Mar. 31). “CeCe McDonald, Reina Gossett, and Dean Spade: Police + Prisons Don’t Keep Us Safe – We Keep Each Other Safe” (Video).

Emmer, Pascal, Adrian Lowe, and R. Barrett Marshall. 2011. This is a Prison, Glitter is Not Allowed: Experiences of Trans and Gender Variant People in Pennsylvania’s Prison System. Philadelphia: The Hearts on a Wire Collective.

Fischer, Mia Louisa. 2019. Terrorizing Gender: Transgender Visibility and the Surveillance Practices of the U.S. Security State. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

Graham, Louis F. 2014. “Navigating Community Institutions: Black Transgender Women’s Experiences in Schools, the Criminal Justice System, and Churches.” Sexuality Research and Social Policy 11: 274-287.

Greene, Joss. 2019. “Categorical Exclusions: How Racialized Gender Regulation Reproduces Reentry Hardship.” Social Problems 66(4):548-563.

Griffin, Michael. 2016. “Intersecting Intersectionalities and the Failure of the Law to Protect Transgender Women of Color in the United States.” Tulane Journal of Law & Sexuality 16:123.

Hattery, Angela J., & Earl Smith. 2018. “Policing Trans Bodies.” Pp. 143-156 in Policing Black Bodies: How Black Lives are Surveilled and How to Work for Change. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield

Jenness, Valerie, and Sarah Fenstermaker. 2014. “Agnes Goes to Prison: Gender Authenticity, Transgender Inmates in Prisons for Men, and Pursuit of the ‘Real Deal.’” Gender & Society 28(1):5–31.

Jenness, Valerie, and Sarah Fenstermaker. 2016. “Forty Years after Brownmiller Prisons for Men, Transgender Inmates, and the Rape of the Feminine.” Gender & Society 30 (1): 14-29.

Page, Enoch H., & Matt U. Richardson 2010. “On the Fear of Small Numbers: A Twenty-first Century Prolegomenon of the U.S. Black Transgender Experience.” Pp. 57-81 in Black Sexualities: Probing Powers, Passions, Practices and Policies, edited by S. Barnes and J. Battle. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Robinson, Brandon Andrew. 2020. “The Lavender Scare in Homonormative Times: Policing, Hyper-incarceration, and LGBTQ Youth Homelessness.” Gender & Society 34(2): 210-232.

Spade, Dean. 2015. Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law. Durham: Duke University Press.

Stanley, Eric A., & Nat Smith (eds.). 2015. Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and The Prison Industrial Complex (2nd ed.). Chino, CA: AK Press.

Sylvia Rivera Law Project. 2007. “It’s War in Here”: A Report on the Treatment of Transgender and Intersex People in New York State Men’s Prisons. New York, NY: Sylvia Rivera Law Project.

Westbrook, Laurel. 2008. “Vulnerable Subjecthood: The Risks and Benefits of the Struggle for Hate Crime Legislation.” Berkeley Journal of Sociology 52:3–23.

Representation: A Double-Edged Sword?

This week, we examine (mis)representations of TBIPOC. Articles cover representation in film, television, social media, and news media, sometimes touching on multiple media. Most representations either reduced TBIPOC to pitiable, yet inevitable victims of violence, or flattened and defanged their identities through transnormativity and homonormativity.

Aizura, Aren Z. 2014. “Trans Feminine Value, Racialized Others and The Limits of Necropolitics.” Pp. 129-147 in Queer Necropolitics, edited by J. Haritaworn, A. Kuntsman, & S. Posocco. New York, NY: Routledge

Bailey, Moya. 2016. “Redefining Representation.” Screen Bodies 1(1):71-86.

Buggs, Shantel Gabrieal. 2019. “(Dis)Owning Exotic: Navigating Race, Intimacy, and Trans Identity.” Sociological Inquiry.

Chen, Jian Neo. 2019. Trans Exploits: Trans of Color Cultures and Technologies in Movement. Durham: Duke University Press

Feder, Sam. 2020. Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen. Netflix Documentary.

Glover, Julian Kevon. 2016. “Redefining Realness?: On Janet Mock, Laverne Cox, TS Madison, and the Representation of Transgender Women of Color in Media.” Souls 18(2-4):338-357.

Gossett, Reina, Eric A. Stanley, & Johanna Burton (eds). Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Green, Kai M. 2015.“‘Race & Gender are Not the Same!’ is Not a Good Response to the ‘Transracial’/Transgender Question OR We Can and Must Do Better,” TheFeministWire.com

Juang, Richard. 2006. “Transgendering the Politics of Recognition.” Pp. 706-719 in The Transgender Studies Reader, edited by Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle. New York: Routledge.

Meyer, Doug. 2020. “An Intersectional Analysis of LGBTQ Online Media Coverage of the Pulse Nightclub Shooting Victims.” Journal of Homosexuality 67(10): 1343-66.

Mishall-Jacob, Anderon. 2019. “Alok Vaid-Menon will Not Tone It Down.” The Advocate.

Murphy, Ryan, Brad Falchuk, & Steven Canals. 2018. Pose. Television series on Netflix.

Ridley, LaVelle. 2019. “Imagining Otherly: Performing Possible Black Trans Futures in Tangerine.” TSQ 6(4):481-490.

Smalls, Shanté Paradigm, & Elliott H. Powell. 2019. “Introduction, An ImPossibility: Black Queer and Trans* Aesthetics.” The Black Scholar 49(1):1-5.

Vahapassi, Valo. 2018. “User-generated reality enforcement: Framing violence against black trans feminine people on a video sharing site.” European Journal of Women’s Studies 26 (1): 85-98.

Vidal-Ortiz, Salvador. 2009. “The Figure of the Transwoman of Color Through the Lens of ‘Doing Gender.’” Gender & Society 23(1):99-103.

Wood, Frank, April Carrillo, & Elizabeth Monk-Turner. 2019. “Visibly Unknown: Media Depiction of Murdered Transgender Women of Color.” Race and Justice.

zamantakis, alithia. 2019. “I Try Not to Push It Too Far’: Trans and Nonbinary Individuals Negotiating Race and Gender within Intimate Relationships”. Pp. 293-308 in Expanding the Rainbow: Exploring the Relationships of Bi+, Trans, Ace, Poly, Kink, and Intersex People. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill | Sense.

Trans Bodies and Health

This week, we think critically about the medical, medicalized, and pathologized paradigms of TBIPOC experience. Instead of a focus on health disparities, articles in this section primarily cover topics related to medical and mental health access and responses to unjust health systems.

Aizura, Aren Z. 2010. “Feminine Transformations: Gender Reassignment Surgical Tourism in Thailand.” Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness 29(4):424-443.

Barcelos, Chris A. and Stephanie L. Budge. 2019. “Inequalities in Crowdfunding for Transgender Health Care.” Transgender Health 4(1): 81-88.

cárdenas, micha. 2016. “Pregnancy: Reproductive Futures in Trans of Color Feminism.” TSQ 3(1-2):48-57.

Ellison, Treva. 2017. “Black Trans Reproductive Labor.” Talk at Barnard College.

Geihi, Pooja S, and Gabriel Arkles. 2007. “Unraveling Injustice: Race and Class Impact of Medicaid Exclusions of Transition-Related Health Care for Transgender People.” Sexuality Research & Social Policy 4(7).

Gill-Peterson, Julian. 2018. Histories of the Transgender Child. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota.

Hwahng, Sel J., Bennett Allen, Cathy Zadoretzky, Hannah Barber, Courtney McKnight & Don Des Jarlais. 2019. Alternative Kinship Structures, Resilience and Social Support among Immigrant Trans Latinas in the USA, Culture, Health & Sexuality, 21:1, 1-15,

Kattari, Shanna K., N. Eugene Walls, Darren L. Whitfield, & Lisa Langenderfer-Magruder. 2015. “Racial and Ethnic Differences in Experiences of Discrimination in Accessing Health Services Among Transgender People in the United States.” International Journal of Transgenderism 16(2):68-79.

Poteat, Tonia, & Lourdes Dolores Follins. 2017. “Narratives of Health Among Black Trans Men: An Exploratory Intersectional Analysis.” Pp. 73-86 in Black LGBT Health in the United States: The Intersection of Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation, edited by L.D. Follins, and J.M. Lassiter. New York: Lexington Books.

Roberto L. Abreu, Kirsten A. Gonzalez, Della V. Mosley, Lex Pulice-Farrow, Alissa Adam & Francesco Duberli (2020) “They feel empowered to discriminate against las chicas”: Latina transgender women’s experiences navigating the healthcare system, International Journal of Transgender Health, https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2020.1767752

Stephanie Anne Shelton & Aryah O. S. Lester. 2020. “A Narrative Exploration of the Importance of Intersectionality in a Black Trans Woman’s Mental Health Experiences.” International Journal of Transgender Health, online publication: 1-14.

Higher Education

This week, we consider TBIPOC experiences in higher education. Most articles examine the complex exclusion TBIPOC experience in Primarily White Institutions (PWIs), although some consider Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

Garvey, J. C., Mobley, S. D., Summerville, K. S., & Moore, G. T. 2018. “Queer and trans* students of color: Navigating identity discourse and college contexts.” The Journal of Higher Education, 90(1), 150–178

Jourian, T.J. 2017. “’Fun and Carefree Like My Polka Dot Bowtie’: Disidentifications of Trans*Masculine Students of Color.” Pp. 123-143 in Queer People of Color in Higher Education, edited by J. M. Johnson & G. C. Javier. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Milan, Tiq. (2019, Apr 18). What happens when colleges try to define trans existence? Vice. Online Article.

Mobley, Steve D., Jr. and Leslie Hall. 2020. “(Re)Defining Queer and Trans* Student Retention and “Success” at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.” Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory and Practice 21(4): 497-519.

Morrison, Jill C. 2019. “Redefining the Morehouse Man: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity at Morehouse College in the Wake of Spelman’s Decision to Accept Transwomen.” Journal of Gender, Race & Justice 22:79.

Nicolazzo, Z. 2016. “It’s a Hard Line to Walk’: Black Non-binary Trans* Collegians’ Perceptions on Passing, Realness, and Trans*-normativity.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 29(9):1173-1188.

Stewart, D.L., and Z Nicolazzo. 2018. “High Impact of [Whiteness] on Trans* Students in Postsecondary Education.” Equity and Excellence in Education 51(2):132-145.

Work in Formal and Informal Economies

This week’s readings focus on discrimination against TBIPOC in the workplace, and on how they navigate these formal and informal economies. Because the criminalization and stigmatization of sex work disproportionately harm TBIPOC, these topics are included in the study of work/employment.

Brown, Nikki. 2020. “How Angelica Ross is Amplifying Trans Creators With Her Annual Tech Summit.” Blogher.

David, Emanuel. 2015. “Purple-Collar Labor: Transgender Workers and Queer Value at Global Call Centers in the Philippines.” Gender & Society 29 (2): 169-194.

de Mota Stabile. 2020. “Sex work abolitionism and hegemonic feminisms: Implications for gender-diverse sex workers and migrants from Brazil.” In TERF Wars (Eds. Ben Vincent, Sonja Erikainen, and Ruth Pearce.” P. 178-195.

Ervin, Woods, and Joss Greene. 2020. Trans Women and Femmes of Color at Work. [Report]

Global Network of Sex Work Projects. 2014. “The Needs and Rights of Trans Sex Workers.”

Hagi, Sarah. 2016. “For Trans Women of Color Safe Employment is a Matter of Life or Death.” Vice.

Hooker, Suzy. 2017. “Black Trans Sex Workers Reflect on December 17th.” Tits and Sasse.

Sankofa, Jasmine. (2016 Dec 12). “From Margin to Center: Sex Work Decrimiminlization Is a Racial Justice Issue.”

“Know Your Rights – Employment General” National Center for Transgender Equality. [Report]

Trans of Color Methodologies

In this section, we consider trans of color as methodology. How do TBIPOC ontologies offer unique ways of knowing the self and others? How does centering TBIPOC alter or disrupt established methodologies? These readings cover a range of methods including qualitative approaches, auto/ethnography, content analysis, and archivism.

Alvarez, Eddy Francisco. 2016. “Finding Sequins in the Rubble: Stitching Together an Archive of Trans Latina Los Angeles.” Transgender Studies Quarterly 3(3-4) :618-127.

Binaohan, b. 2014. decolonizing trans / gender 101. biyuti publishing. Toronto.

de Vries, Kylan Mattias. 2015. “Transgender People of Color at the Center: Conceptualizing a New Intersectional Model.” Ethnicities 15(1):3–27.

Driskill, Qwo-Li. 2016. “Introduction: Asegi Stories: Memories Between the Basket Walls” from Asegi stories: Cherokee queer and two-spirit memory. Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press. (Pp. 3-20).

Ellison, Treva Carrie. 2019. “Black Femme Praxis and the Promise of Black Gender.” The Black Scholar, 49:1, 6-16

Gill-Peterson, Jules. 2018. “Introduction: Towards a Trans of Color Critique of Medicine.” (pp. 1-34). From Histories of the Transgender Child. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota.

Green, Kai M. 2016. “Troubling the Waters: Mobilizing a Trans* Analytic”, No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies, E. Patrick Johnson

Green, Kai M. and Marquis Bey. 2017. “Where Black Feminist Thought and Trans*Feminism Meet: A Conversation.” Souls 19(4): 438-454.

Muñoz, José Esteban. 1999. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota Print. Cultural Studies of the Americas ; v. 2.

Snorton, C. Riley. 2009. “‘A New Hope’: The Psychic Life of Passing.” Hypatia, 24: 77-92.

Snorton, C. Riley. 2017. Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity. (especially Preface and CH 1) University of Minnesota Press.

Valentine, David. Imagining Transgender:An Ethnography of a Category. Duke University Press.

Ware, Syrus Marcus. 2017. “All Power to All People? Black LGBTTI2QQ Activism, Remembrance, and Archiving in Toronto.” Transgender Studies Quarterly. 4 (2): 170-180.