UN3155: Global Histories of the Trans Present | Z. Nunn

Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Undergraduate Seminar
W 12:10-2M

Are trans people new? Is sex binary? Can sex change? These questions and their precedents have monopolized gendered politics and have taken on global significance in recent years.

Following Foucault’s formulation of a history of the present—a genealogy of how we got here—this course is a history of the trans present in that it charts the ways in which sex and gender have been ontologized across borders and contexts, often in ways which regulate and police bodies within borders. It historicises the divisive discourses that animate present day politics, showing that sexual dimorphism’s legitimacy has been continually contested in different ways and from different standpoints for centuries, and that arguing for or against the universality of sex/gender is a move that people across left/right and liberal/illiberal political lines have historically made.

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