What Transpires Now: Transgender History and the Future We Need
Susan O’Neal Stryker, Associate Professor, University of Arizona

History is a story we tell in the present that links what we know of the past to a future we envision. In this talk, drawn from her forthcoming book of the same title, gender theorist and historian Susan Stryker examines the trans-temporal dimensions of what gets labelled “transgender” today, but which can be thought of as a more general capacity for life to exceed whatever current configurations it might have. At stake, Stryker contends, in vexing contemporary conflicts over pronouns and public toilets, is a deeper ontological struggle over which fantasies of past and futurity have the ability to ground themselves in materiality and come to count as real.

Susan Stryker is Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona, where she spearheads the Transgender Studies Initiative.

Feminist Studies Colloquium Series Spring 2017 Schedule:
May 4th: Doris Leibetseder, “QT Reproduction: Queen and Transgender Use of Assisted Reproductive Technologies”
May 17th: Susan O’Neal Stryker, “What Transpires Now: Transgender History and the Future We Need”
June 1st: Patricia de Santana Pinho, “We Bring Home the Roots: African American Women Touring Brazil and Bearing their Nation”