This book provides a crucial resource for readers who are investigating trans issues. It takes a diverse and historic approach, focusing on more than one idea or one experience of trans identity or trans history. Transgender: A Reference Handbook is a go-to resource about the transgender experience. The book takes contemporary as well as historic aspects into consideration. It looks at ancient indigenous cultures that honored third, fourth, and fifth gender identities as well as more contemporary ideas of what "transgender" means. Notably, it focuses not only on Western medical ideas of gender affirmation but on cultural diversity surrounding the topic.
Transgender studies is the latest area of academic inquiry to grow out of the exciting nexus of queer theory, feminist studies, and the history of sexuality. Because transpeople challenge our most fundamental assumptions about the relationship between bodies, desire, and identity, the field is both fascinating and contentious. The Transgender Studies Reader puts between two covers fifty influential texts with new introductions by the editors that, taken together, document the evolution of transgender studies in the English-speaking world. By bringing together the voices and experience of transgender individuals, doctors, psychologists and academically-based theorists, this volume will be a foundational text for the transgender community, transgender studies, and related queer theory.
This is the first introductory textbook intended for transgender/trans studies at the undergraduate level. The book can also be used for related courses in LGBTQ, queer, and gender/feminist studies. It encompasses and connects global contexts, intersecting identities, historic and contemporary issues, literature, history, politics, art, and culture. Ardel Haefele-Thomas embraces the richness of intersecting identities—how race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, nation, religion, and ability have cross-influenced to shape the transgender experience and trans culture across and beyond the binary. Written by an accomplished teacher with experience in a wide variety of higher learning institutions, this new text inspires readers to explore not only contemporary transgender issues and experiences but also the global history of gender diversity through the ages.
Transgender studies, broadly defined, has become increasingly prominent as a field of study over the past several decades, particularly in the last ten years. This encyclopedia, featuring more than 300 well-researched articles, takes an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to trans studies. Entries address a wide range of topics, from broad concepts (e.g., the criminal justice system, activism, mental health), to specific subjects (e.g., the trans pride flag, the Informed Consent Model, voice therapy), to key historical figures, events, and organizations (e.g., Lili Elbe, the Stonewall Riots, Black Lives Matter). Entries focus on diverse lives, identities, and contexts, including the experiences of trans people in different racial, religious, and sexual communities in the United States and the variety of ways that gender is expressed in other countries.
This book examines the growing transgender rights movement and the issues surrounding the transgender community. Discussion of topics related to increased legal protection, military service, and the many ethical as well as financial issues surrounding health care. It includes primary and secondary sources from a variety of perspectives; eyewitnesses, scientific journals, government officials, and many others. An extensive bibliography and annotated list of relevant organizations to contact offer a gateway to future research.
Invisible Lives is the first scholarly study of transgendered people—cross-dressers, drag queens and transsexuals—and their everyday lives. Through combined theoretical and empirical study, Viviane K. Namaste argues that transgendered people are not so much produced by medicine or psychiatry as they are erased, or made invisible, in a variety of institutional and cultural settings. Namaste begins her work by analyzing two theoretical perspectives on transgendered people—queer theory and the social sciences—displaying how neither of these has adequately addressed the issues most relevant to sex change: everything from employment to health care to identity papers. Namaste then examines some of the rhetorical and semiotic inscriptions of transgendered figures in culture, including studies of early punk and glam rock subcultures, to illustrate how the effacement of transgendered people is organized in different cultural sites. Invisible Lives concludes with new research on some of the day-to-day concerns of transgendered people, offering case studies in violence, health care, gender identity clinics, and the law.
The first full-length study of transgender representations in art, fiction, film, video, and music. In their first book since the critically acclaimed Female Masculinity, Jack Halberstam examines the significance of the transgender body in a provocative collection of essays on queer time and space. Halberstam presents a series of case studies focused on the meanings of masculinity in its dominant and alternative forms' especially female and trans-masculinities as they exist within subcultures, and are appropriated within mainstream culture. In a Queer Time and Place opens with a probing analysis of the life and death of Brandon Teena, a young transgender man who was brutally murdered in small-town Nebraska. After looking at mainstream representations of the transgender body as exhibited in the media frenzy surrounding this highly visible case and the Oscar-winning film based on Brandon's story, Boys Don't Cry, Halberstam turns attention to the cultural and artistic production of queers themselves. Considering the sudden visibility of the transgender body in the early twenty-first century against the backdrop of changing conceptions of space and time, In a Queer Time and Place is the first full-length study of transgender representations in art, fiction, film, video, and music.
This book examines the transgender community's struggle for equality over the last decade, comparing the Obama and Trump administrations' stance on transgender rights policies. Transgender rights claims have assumed an important place on the nation's policymaking agenda as society has increasingly become aware that transgender individuals are subject to discrimination because they do not conform to the norms of the gender identity they were assigned at birth. With Congress virtually absent from the policymaking process, the executive branch and the federal courts have been chiefly responsible for determining the parameters of transgender rights policies. The study contrasts the Obama administration's efforts to expand equal rights for the transgender community, especially in employment, education, and military service, with the Trump administration's determination to rescind the Obama-era initiatives. In their efforts to do so, Trump administration officials have urged the courts to reverse decisions extending the benefit of civil rights laws and constitutional guarantees to the transgender community, arguing that gender identity is outside the scope of these protections. Although most federal courts have been inclined to accept the Obama administration's perspective on transgender rights, ultimately, this will be a matter for the U.S. Supreme Court to decide. The book is appropriate for students, scholars, and interested general readers.
The author seeks to counterbalance the prevailing medicalised approach to statutory support for transgender people which tends to focus on the physical processes of transition rather than on subsequent social role adjustment.Kate Norman relates her own research findings to additional data and publications within three main themes: first, the provision of social support to transgender people by dedicated and generic social care services; secondly, social care issues in relation to transgender identity and transgender status, including discrimination, transphobia and mental health issues; and, thirdly, the effect of 'coming out' as transgender, and of transitioning, on relationships between transgender people and their families and friends, colleagues, neighbours and the wider community.The book explores the potential for improved social support to transgender people and also to partners, children and other family members. It concludes by proposing a combination of advocacy and social care support to further the legal and social status of transgender people.
This book provides a comprehensive account of the educational experiences of students, parents, and educators--transgender and cisgender--in the context of current debates about the inclusion of transgender people in schools. Drawing on critiques of cisgenderism and emphasising the importance of a whole-of-school approach, Transgender People and Education explores complex topics including sexuality education for transgender young people, teaching about gender diversity, the journeys of cisgender parents of transgender children, the experiences of transgender parents and educators in schools, and the role of cisgender administrators, educators, and school counsellors and psychologists in creating inclusive school cultures. Reporting on empirical analyses conducted by the authors, the book makes a unique contribution to thinking about gender diversity in schools and advocates for the broadening of educational approaches beyond narrow gender binaries.
This volume brings together experts with diverse disciplinary backgrounds in the China field, from cultural studies to history to musicology, to make a timely intervention--from the historical demise of enuchism to male cross-dressing shows in contemporary Taiwan--to inaugurate a subfield in Chinese transgender studies.
How Sex Changed is a fascinating social, cultural, and medical history of transsexuality in the United States. Joanne Meyerowitz tells a powerful human story about people who had a deep and unshakable desire to transform their bodily sex. In the last century when many challenged the social categories and hierarchies of race, class, and gender, transsexuals questioned biological sex itself, the category that seemed most fundamental and fixed of all. From early twentieth-century sex experiments in Europe, to the saga of Christine Jorgensen, whose sex-change surgery made headlines in 1952, to today's growing transgender movement, Meyerowitz gives us the first serious history of transsexuality. In this story of transsexuality, Meyerowitz shows how new definitions of sex circulated in popular culture, science, medicine, and the law, and she elucidates the tidal shifts in our social, moral, and medical beliefs over the twentieth century, away from sex as an evident biological certainty and toward an understanding of sex as something malleable and complex. How Sex Changed is an intimate history that illuminates the very changes that shape our understanding of sex, gender, and sexuality today.
Covering American transgender history from the mid-twentieth century to today, Transgender History takes a chronological approach to the subject of transgender history, with each chapter covering major movements, writings, and events. Chapters cover the transsexual and transvestite communities in the years following World War II; trans radicalism and social change, which spanned from 1966 with the publication of The Transsexual Phenomenon, and lasted through the early 1970s; the mid-'70s to 1990-the era of identity politics and the changes witnessed in trans circles through these years; and the gender issues witnessed through the '90s and '00s. Transgender History includes informative sidebars highlighting quotes from major texts and speeches in transgender history and brief biographies of key players, plus excerpts from transgender memoirs and discussion of treatments of transgenderism in popular culture.
Transgender Warriors is an essential read for trans people of all ages who want to learn about the towering figures who have come before them—and for everyone who is part of the fight for trans liberation. This groundbreaking book—far ahead of its time when first published in 1996 and still galvanizing today—interweaves history, memoir, and gender studies to show that transgender people, far from being a modern phenomenon, have always existed and have exerted their influence throughout history. Leslie Feinberg—hirself a lifelong transgender revolutionary—reveals the origin of the check-one-box-only gender system and shows how zie found empowerment in the lives of transgender warriors around the world, from the Two Spirits of the Americas to the many genders of India, from the trans shamans of East Asia to the gender-bending Queen Nzinga of Angola, from Joan of Arc to Marsha P. Johnson and beyond.
A groundbreaking twentieth-century history of transgender children. With transgender rights front and center in American politics, media, and culture, the pervasive myth still exists that today's transgender children are a brand new generation--pioneers in a field of new obstacles and hurdles. Histories of the Transgender Child shatters this myth, uncovering a previously unknown twentieth-century history when transgender children not only existed but preexisted the term transgender and its predecessors, playing a central role in the medicalization of trans people, and all sex and gender. Until now, little has been known about early transgender history and life and its relevance to children. Using a wealth of archival research from hospitals and clinics, including incredible personal letters from children to doctors, as well as scientific and medical literature, this book reaches back to the first half of the twentieth century--a time when the category transgender was not available but surely existed, in the lives of children and parents.
An accessible, bold new vision for the future of intersectional trans feminism, called "one of the best books in trans studies in recent years" by Susan Stryker. There is no shortage of voices demanding everyone pay attention to the violence trans women suffer. But one frighteningly basic question seems never to be answered: why does it happen? If men are not inherently evil and trans women do not intrinsically invite reprisal--which would make violence unstoppable--then the psychology of that violence had to arise at a certain place and time. The trans panic had to be invented. Weaving together the stories of historical figures in a richly detailed narrative, the book shows how trans femininity emerged under colonial governments, the sex work industry, the policing of urban public spaces, and the area between the formal and informal economy. A Short History of Trans Misogyny is the first book to explain why trans women are burdened by such a weight of injustice and hatred.
This provocative and searing take on the current feminist movement explores the intersections of gender and desire—from "one of the most exciting critics working today" (New York Magazine). Everyone is female, and everyone hates it. Females is Andrea Long Chu's genre-defying investigation into sex and lies, desperate artists and reckless politics, the smothering embrace of gender and the punishing force of desire. Drawing inspiration from a forgotten play by Valerie Solanas—the woman who wrote the SCUM Manifesto and shot Andy Warhol—Chu aims her searing wit and surgical intuition at targets ranging from performance art to psychoanalysis, incels to porn. She even has a few barbs reserved for feminists like herself. Each step of the way, she defends the indefensible claim that femaleness is less a biological state and more a fatal existential condition that afflicts the entire human race—men, women, and everyone else. Or maybe she's just projecting. A thrilling new voice who has been credited with launching the "second wave" of trans studies, Chu shows readers how to write for your life, baring her innermost self with a morbid sense of humor and a mordant kind of hope.
What constitutes a "real" man or woman in the twenty-first century? Since birth control pills, erectile dysfunction remedies, and factory-made testosterone and estrogen were developed, biology is definitely no longer destiny. In this penetrating analysis of gender, Paul B. Preciado shows the ways in which the synthesis of hormones since the 1950s has fundamentally changed how gender and sexual identity are formulated, and how the pharmaceutical and pornography industries are in the business of creating desire. This riveting continuation of Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality also includes Preciado's diaristic account of his own use of testosterone every day for one year, and its mesmerizing impact on his body as well as his imagination.
Biologist and trans woman Julie Serano reveals a unique perspective on femininity, masculinity, and gender identityA provocative manifesto, Whipping Girl tells the powerful story of Julia Serano, a transsexual woman whose supremely intelligent writing reflects her diverse background as a lesbian transgender activist and professional biologist. Serano shares her experiences and observations—both pre- and post-transition—to reveal the ways in which fear, suspicion, and dismissiveness toward femininity shape our societal attitudes toward trans women, as well as gender and sexuality as a whole. Serano makes the case that today's feminists and transgender activist must work to embrace and empower femininity—in all of its wondrous forms.
Provides access to materials exploring important aspects of LGBTQ life. Includes periodicals, newsletters, manuscripts, government records, organizational papers, correspondence, an international selection of posters, and other primary source materials.
Includes access to four modules: LGBTQ History Since 1940, part 1, LGBTQ History Since 1940, part 2, International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture, and L'Enfer de la Bibliotheque Nationale de France Digital Archive.
Primary sources documenting the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations from the nineteenth century to the present. Includes sources for the study of women's suffrage, the feminist movement, the men’s movement, employment, education, the body, the family, and government and politics.
Material has been sourced from across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. Key areas represented in the material include: employment and labor, education, government and legislation, the body, domesticity and the family. Includes records from men’s and women’s organisations and pressure groups, detailing twentieth-century lobbying and activism on a wide array of issues to reveal developing gender relations and prevalent challenges.
Citations to articles, books, conference papers, pamphlets, dissertations and other publications about gender inequality, masculinity, post-feminism, and gender identity.
Gender Studies Database, provides indexing and abstracts covering the full spectrum of gender-related scholarship. It offers over a million records from scholarly and popular publications, including journals, books, conference papers and theses.
Full text database with a focus on how gender impacts a variety of subject areas.
GenderWatch is a full text database of nearly 400 periodicals and other publications that focus on how gender impacts a variety of subject areas. Publications include academic and scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, regional publications, books, booklets and pamphlets, conference proceedings, and government, and special reports.
Access to archival runs of 26 of the most influential, longest-running serial publications covering LGBT interests. Includes the pre-eminent US and UK titles – The Advocate and Gay Times, respectively. Includes access to collection 1 and collection 2.
Chronicles more than six decades of the history and culture of the LGBT community. In addition to LGBT/gender/sexuality studies, this material also serves related disciplines such as sociology, political science, psychology, health, and the arts.
The LGBTQ+ Library Catalog contains materials pertaining to asexual, bisexual, gay, intersex, lesbian, transgender, and queer issues. These resources include books, videos, CDs, and periodicals. This collection is intended to be a resource for both research and entertainment.
The LGBTQ+ Library provides lending services to the entire community; anyone can register to become a patron with a photo ID.
LGBT Studies in Video is a cinematic survey of the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people as well as the cultural and political evolution of the LGBT community. Includes access to volume 1 and volume 2.
LGBT Thought and Culture is an online resource hosting books, periodicals, and archival materials documenting LGBT political, social and cultural movements throughout the twentieth century and into the present day.
Collection of primary source document collections and curatorial essays aimed at students and scholars of queer history and culture. The database uses “queer” in its broadest and most inclusive sense, to embrace topics that are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender and to include work on sexual and gender formations that are queer but not necessarily LGBT.
Each document exhibit includes 20-40 primary source documents; whenever possible, they are available in both transcribed (searchable) and original form. Every exhibit also includes a critical introductory essay that helps explain the significance of the primary sources in historical terms and in relationship to previous scholarship.
Committed to the preservation of the history of pioneering activists, community leaders, and researchers who have contributed to the betterment of Trans+ people. They are accessible to everyone, free of charge. This archive is the largest transgender archive in the world and contains archival material from both large and small trans organizations, focusing on the contributions of activists and researchers working for the betterment of trans, non-binary, and Two-Spirit people.
The John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives is Philadelphia's most extensive collection of personal papers, organizations records, periodicals, audiovisual material and ephemera documenting the rich history of our LGBTQ community.
Queer.Archive.Work, Inc. (QAW) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) library, publishing studio, and residency serving Providence, RI and beyond. QAW aims to be accountable, to center marginalized voices through intersectional work, and to cultivate anti-racist, safe platforms for independent, queer publishing. Queer.Archive.Work’s physical reading room in Providence houses a non-circulating collection of zines, books, and objects, open to all for research and inspiration.
Founded in 1985, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT) Historical Society is recognized internationally as a leader in the field of LGBTQ public history. Our operations are centered around two sites: our GLBT Historical Society Museum and our Dr. John P. De Cecco Archives and Research Center.
The New York City Trans Oral History Project is a community archive devoted to the collection, preservation and sharing of trans histories, organized in collaboration with the New York Public Library. Our archive documents transgender resistance and resilience in New York City. We work to confront the erasure of trans lives and to record diverse histories of gender as intersecting with race and racism, poverty, dis/ability, aging, housing migration, sexism, and the AIDS crisis. Anyone who identifies as trans / gender non conforming and as a sometime resident of New York City is invited to contribute an interview. All interviews are accessible to the public and part of the Creative Commons license for free and open use. Most of our interviewers are transcribed. We use an expansive tagging system to identify keywords and terms.
The Digital Transgender Archive increases the accessibility of transgender history by providing an online hub for digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world. Based in Boston, Massachusetts at Northeastern University, the DTA is an international collaboration among more than sixty colleges, universities, nonprofit organizations, public libraries, and private collections. By digitally localizing a wide range of trans-related materials, the DTA expands access to trans history for academics and independent researchers alike to foster education concerning trans history.
The Transgender Archives of the University of Victoria Libraries provides digital access to: Word of Mouth is a digital exhibit showcasing the Trans Activism Oral History collection, all 67 issues of The FTM Newsletter, all 111 issues of Transvestia, the first widely distributed magazine focused on the cross-dressing community, the Transgender Scrapbooks collection, and all issues of Tapestry Magazine.
The Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP) was first launched in November 2003 in an effort to preserve queer zines and make them available to other queers, researchers, historians, punks, and anyone else who has an interest DIY publishing and underground queer communities.
International Journal of Transgender Health, together with its partner organization the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), offers an international, multidisciplinary scholarly forum for publication in the field of transgender health in its broadest sense for academics, practitioners, policy makers, and the general population.
Over the past two decades, transgender studies has become fertile ground for new approaches to cultural analysis. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly offers a high-profile venue for innovative research and scholarship that contest the objectification, pathologization, and exoticization of transgender lives. It publishes interdisciplinary work that explores the diversity of gender, sex, sexuality, embodiment, and identity in ways that have not been adequately addressed by feminist and queer scholarship.
The Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies (BATS) is the leading venue for academic research addressing the social, cultural, and political issues facing transgender and gender minority communities across the globe. The journal offers a platinum open access forum for research of all theoretical and methodological approaches oriented toward the identification, analysis, and improvement of the material conditions of transgender life.
Transgender Health is the first peer-reviewed journal dedicated to addressing the healthcare needs of transgender individuals throughout their lifespan and identifying gaps in knowledge as well as priority areas where policy development and research are needed to achieve healthcare equity.
Schilt, K., & Westbrook, L. (2009). Doing Gender, Doing Heteronormativity: “Gender Normals,” Transgender People, and the Social Maintenance of Heterosexuality. Gender and Society, 23(4), 440–464. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20676798
Snorton, C. R., & Haritaworn, J. (2022). Trans necropolitics: A transnational reflection on violence, death, and the trans of color afterlife. In The transgender studies reader remix (pp. 305-316). Routledge.
For additional opportunities, see the following lists:
Campus Pride Scholarships A list of scholarships, fellowships and grants for LGBTQ and ally students at both the undergraduate and graduate-level.
Scholarships:
Transgender First Scholarship The first national scholarship exclusively dedicated to helping underserved Transgender students get affordable access to a college education.
APIQWTC (Asian and Pacific Islander Queer Women and Transgender Community) Scholarship Founded to uplift current (or future) API queer and trans community leaders. We will be awarding scholarships of $3,500 each to three Asian/Pacific Islander lesbian, bisexual, or queer women or transgender individuals pursuing technical, professional, or trades certification or other tuition-based learning.
Flagship Scholarship The Point Foundation Flagship Scholarship empowers LGBTQ students who are earning their undergraduate, graduate, & doctoral degrees at accredited colleges in the United States by offering financial support, community resources, and professional development.