ABSTRACT
In the autumn of 2011, Deborah Lynn Steinberg, Ruth Pearce and I worked through the night to submit a seminar series grant application to the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). We were awarded the grant and thankful for the opportunity to offer the seminars. We believed it was time to provide an opportunity for people to congregate in a safe(r) space (albeit a space that is institutional and prized for its pedagogy), where ideas about trans theory and practice could be shaped and re-shaped – perhaps even produce the starting point for a trans-positive epistemological framework.
We decided that this exploration of a trans-potential to broaden gender and sexuality studies could best be offered through a series of open events, with attendees invited from across the UK to join us in a cross-disciplinary discussion about the emergence of ‘trans’. Months of preparation then took hold as we planned how to budget for and theme the seminars, how we would publicise them, where they would be held, how we could bring together activists, academics and lay people and how we might support them in feeling they could openly listen and talk to and with one another. The resulting four seminars each took a key thematic trajectory, focusing respectively on everyday lives, clinical and therapeutic contexts, popular discourse and gender and sexuality theory. The question of ‘trans’ provided both a focal point and locus for wider explorations of normative and alternative practices, identifications, body-ethical/bioethical understandings, health, rights, politics and welfare issues on the terrain of gender and sexuality.
