Doing Gender Lecture – Jack Halberstam

The Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies in cooperation with her partners organises the eighteenth round of the DOING GENDER Lecture Series. These lectures stress the importance of doing gender work combined with an active involvement in the practice of gender theory and research. The concept of DOING GENDER supports a hands-on approach to gender issues in the sense of social and political engagement with the new forms of gender inequalities that are taking shape in the world today. The lecture series wants to give space to the new generations of gender theorists and practitioners and to perspectives that innovate the field and do gender in new ways. Key is the notion of doing gender: what is the state of the art definition of gender? How do contemporary scholars and activists utilise this definition?

Lecture: Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Guide to Gender Variance
In the last decade, public discussions of transgender issues have increased exponentially. However, with this increased visibility has come not just power, but regulation, both in favor of and against trans people. What was once regarded as an unusual or even unfortunate disorder has become an accepted articulation of gendered embodiment as well as a new site for political activism and political recognition. What happened in the last few decades to prompt such an extensive rethinking of our understanding of gendered embodiment? How did a stigmatized identity become so central to U.S. and European articulations of self? And how have people responded to the new definitions and understanding of sex and the gendered body? In Trans*, Jack Halberstam explores these recent shifts in the meaning of the gendered body and representation, and explores the possibilities of a nongendered, gender-optional, or gender-queer future.

Jack Halberstam is Professor of English and Gender Studies at Columbia University, New York. Halberstam is the author of six books including ‘The Queer Art of Failure’, ‘Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal’ and most recently ‘Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Guide to Gender Variability’.

Doing Gender Lecture details:

Monday March 26, 2018