Monday, August 31, 2020

The Object of Transgender Aesthetics

 

A More "Bloggy" Work in Progress Post
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A Definition of Cisgender:

A sensitivity, aesthetic, orientation, attraction, allure, animus, or networking towards objects or material environments extended or provided to the person on the basis of gender assignment.
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A Definition of Transgender:

A sensitivity, aesthetic, orientation, attraction, allure, animus, or networking towards objects or material environments not extended or provided to the person on the basis of gender assignment.
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These are contingent definitions I am thinking through as I revise my work into a book project, specifically into a chapter on trans aesthetic relationships with objects and physical environments. The purpose is to further centralize objects that typically get moved to the periphery of transgender identity, primarily as tools of language, performance, signification, expression, and legibility. How does transgender phenomenology and materialism develop trans psyches in different ways and vary depending on physical environment, geographic location, historical times, cultural milieu, access to technologies, and socio-economic power? In this work, I am building on generations of queer, BIPoC, feminist, and marxist thinkers as well as still developing transgender studies in the materialist vein. The object of transgender aesthetics is already emergent in society and the academy but needs further articulation as transgender literary and artistic theory synthesizes as a field.
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Monday, August 17, 2020

Trans Literature Review: When the Moon Was Ours

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A new Trans Literature review of "When the Moon Was Ours" (2016) written by Anna-Marie McLemore, a queer Latina author, telling the fantasy tale of trans love, witches, and a girl with flowers growing out of her wrists!


Comment to offer suggestions for upcoming reviews!
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Saturday, August 1, 2020

The Quarantine Classroom: A Poem for Plague and Pandemic


A poem for my students
inspired by the Summer 2020 syllabus:
Diversity in the Eras o
Medieval Plague and Modern Pandemic
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Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago?
Where has the semester gone?
Hwær cwom symbla gesetu?
Where was the summer?

May you heed well the wisdom
How to survive a plague and act up
For all fruits who fall far from fathers
And sprout seeds of a different sort.

May our five or six feet apart
Not cut us off from our quests
Through the riddles and chaos
To find new meanings for intimacy.

Pardon our household dances and revels
Only keep us far from devilish parties
Death will not be stopped by walls or class
Although masks prove better than masques.

May quarantine unravel our pride,
Unveil and unteach our prejudice,
For the uprisings has begun
Among those left for dead.

But as we march, beware the crusades
Promising purity and monstrous cures
For the new men may look much like the old
Only devoid of creative diversity.

May our histories and dreams prepare us
For facing that hideous power
Which causes men to lose their heads
Guiding us in word, love, courage, patience, and glory.

Through flood and fire
May we hold on to hope
Even as the inferno rises
Let us hold up those lives called ‘lost.’

As plague and pandemic fall and spring again,
May these lessons and stories carry you
From season to season, age to age,
Looking back, remaining present, even as we move forward.

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