Transfeminist Performance
@pfs259-blog
MARCH 2018 / University of California, Davis - Universities across the United States are incorporating trans studies into the academy. Many schools have subsumed trans studies into Gender Studies or Womenâs Studies departments; the University of Arizona has created an Initiative for Trans* Studies. In the midst of institutionalization, the struggle for transgender recognition and rights garners national attention. Trans people are still under immediate threat. In 2017, 28 transgender people were murdered â the most violent year recorded to date according to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). The majority of victims are transgender women of color, attesting to the urgency of trans studies that are catered toward a critical and capacious social justice end. We advocate for the centering of a transfeminist politics. Between disciplining trans studies and struggling for trans rights, transfeminism offers a critical framework through which we may enable ourselves and others to collaboratively, collectively, and iteratively ask how knowledge, teaching and learning can be transed. We believe that transfeminism centers liberation for transgender people and lays a theoretical framework for scholars, activists, and visionaries. We hope that this manifesto will serve as a guide for institutional agents in forming trans studies as a discipline that centers transfeminism, and for individuals and communities dedicated to equity and justice. On this blog you will also find resources that we find to be useful and generative in engaging with transfeminist political projects, including a syllabus, key quotations, and a performance archive.Â