Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-766f47fc8c-nm4jc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-03T11:32:31.172Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

TransGenre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2025

Aaron Hammes
Affiliation:
Case Western Reserve University, Ohio

Summary

TransGenre is a reconsideration of genre theory in long-form fiction through transgender minor literature in the US and Canada. Using four genre sites (the road novel, the mourning novel, the chosen family novel, and the archival novel), this Element considers how the minoritized becomes the minoritarian through deterritorializing generic conventions in fiction to its own ends. In so doing, TransGenre proposes narrative reading practices as strategies of the minor to subvert, transgress, and reappropriate the novel's genealogy and radical future prospects. A range of fiction published in the last decade is deployed as largely self-theorizing, generating its own epistemological, thematic, and formal innovations and possibilities, revealing cisheteronormative underpinnings of generic categories and turning them in on themselves.
Get access
Type
Element
Information
Online ISBN: 9781009502191
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 06 February 2025

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Arondekar, Anjali (2009) For the Record: On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Awkward-Rich, Cameron (2022) The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Bawrashi, Anis, and Reiff, Mary Jo (2010) Genre: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy. Anderson, SC: Parlor Press.Google Scholar
Beebee, Thomas (1994) The Ideology of Genre: A Comparative Study of Generic Instability. State College: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Binnie, Imogen (2013) Nevada. Brooklyn, NY: Topside Press.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith (1988) Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. Theatre Journal, 40(4), 519531. www.jstor.org/stable/3207893?origin=JSTOR-pdf.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, Judith (2004) Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Califia, Patrick (1997) Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism. Hoboken, NJ: Cleis.Google Scholar
Candelario, Ginetta E. B. (2022) Editor’s Introduction. Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, 21(2), 299301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Culler, Jonathan (2009). Lyric, History, and Genre. New Literary History, 40(4), 879899. www.jstor.org/stable/40666452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix ([1975] 1986) Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, translated by Dana Polan. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques (1980) The Law of Genre. Glyph 7, 202232.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques (1995) Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Devitt, Amy (1993) Generalizing about Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept. Composition and Communication 44(4), 573586. https://doi.org/10.2307/358391.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Digital Transgender Archive (2020) About. www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/about/overview.Google Scholar
Dimock, Wai Chee (2006) Genre as World System: Epic and Novel on Four Continents. Narrative 14(1), 85101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, Rebekah (2015) “This Is Not a Girl”: A Trans* Archival Reading. Transgender Studies Quarterly 2(4), 650665.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emerson, Caryl, and Morson, Gary Saul (1990) Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Feinberg, Leslie (1993) Stone Butch Blues. New York: Alyson Books.Google Scholar
Feinberg, Leslie (1996) Transgender Warriors. New York: Beacon.Google Scholar
Felker-Martin, Gretchen (2022) Manhunt. New York: Tor Nightfire.Google Scholar
Fellman, Isaac (2022) Dead Collections. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Fleischmann, T. (2019) Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through. Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press.Google Scholar
Frye, Northrop (1971) Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Giles, Harry Josephine (2020) F-Words: The Many Languages of Transfeminism. Engender. September 28. www.engender.org.uk/news/blog/f-words-the-many-languages-of-transfeminism.Google Scholar
Gill-Peterson, Jules (2024) A Short History of Trans Misogyny. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Hammes, Aaron (2024) Minor Literature as Trans Literature. In Vakoch, Douglas A. and Sharp, Sabine (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Transgender Literature. New York: Routledge, 448458.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartman, Sadiya (2008) Venus in Two Acts. Small Axe, 12(2), 114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heartscape, Porpentine Charity (2023) Serious Weakness. Self-published.Google Scholar
Heinrich, Larissa (2012) Begin Anywhere: Transgender and Transgenre Desire in Qiu Miaojin’s Last Words from Montmartre. In Chiang, H. (ed.) Transgender China. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 161181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heyam, Kit (2022) Before We Were Trans. London: Seal Press.Google Scholar
Israeli-Nevo, Atalia (2017) Taking (My) Time: Temporality in Transition, Queer Delays and Being (in the) Present. Somatechnics, 7(1), 3449.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacques, Juliet (2019) Variations: Transgender Memoir, Theory and Fiction. University of Sussex thesis. https://sussex.figshare.com/articles/thesis/Variations_transgender_memoir_theory_and_fiction/23470952/1/files/41179544.pdf.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric (1975) Magical Narratives: Romance as Genre. New Literary History, 7(1), 135163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jarboe, Julian K (2020) Everyone on the Moon Is Essential Personnel. Amherst, MA: Lethe.Google Scholar
Joukhadar, Zeyn (2021) The Thirty Names of Night. New York: Washington Square.Google Scholar
Joynt, Chase, and Schilt, Kristen (2015) Anxiety at the Archive. Transgender Studies Quarterly, 2(4), 635644.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katz, R. E. (2021) And Then the Gray Heaven. Ann Arbor, MI: Dzanc Books.Google Scholar
Kerouac, Jack (1999) On the Road. New York: Penguin Classics.Google Scholar
Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth (2014) On Death and Dying: What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy and Their Own Families. New York: Scribner.Google Scholar
Lake, Joss (2021) Future Feeling. New York: Soft Skull.Google Scholar
Lavery, Grace (2023) Pleasure and Efficacy: Of Pen Names, Cover Versions, and Other Trans Techniques. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Lawlor, Andrea (2019) Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Lukács, Georg (1983) The Historical Novel. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Malatino, Hil (2022) Side Affects: On Being Trans and Feeling Bad. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Mccaslin, Charlotte (2023) Ofrenda. Ofrenda, Roselit Bone, Get Loud Recordings.Google Scholar
McDonnell, M. Z. (2019) Poet, Prophet, Fox: The Tale of Sinnach the Seer. Nyack, NY: Moose Maple Press.Google Scholar
Milks, Megan (2021) Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body. New York: Amethyst Editions.Google Scholar
Miller, Carolyn R. (1984) Genre as Social Action. Quarterly Journal of Speech 70, 151167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muñoz, José Esteban (1999) Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Peters, Torrey (2021) Detransition, Baby. New York: One World.Google Scholar
Plante, Hazel Jane (2019) Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian). Montreal, QC: Metonymy.Google Scholar
Plante, Hazel Jane (2023) Any Other City. Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp.Google Scholar
Plett, Casey (2018) Little Fish. Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp.Google Scholar
Proseer, Jay (1998) Second Skins. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Raha, Nat (2017) Transfeminine Brokenness, Radical Transfeminism. South Atlantic Quarterly, 116 (3), 632646.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawson, K. J. (2014) Archive. Transgender Studies Quarterly, 1(1–2), 2426.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Ronald Suresh (2002) Keeping the Self: The Novelist as (Self-) Archivist. In Hamilton, C., Harris, V., Taylor, J., Pickover, M., Reid, G., and Saleh, R. (eds.) Refiguring the Archive. New York: Springer, 301322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenberg, Jordy (2019) Confessions of the Fox. New York: One World.Google Scholar
Salah, Trish (2021) Transgender and Transgenre Writing. In Miller, J. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Twenty-First Century American Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 174195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stone, Sandy (2006) The Empire Strikes Back. In Stryker, S. and Whittle, S. (eds.) The Transgender Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 221235.Google Scholar
Stryker, Susan (2006) My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage. In Stryker, S. and Whittle, S. (eds.) The Transgender Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 244256.Google Scholar
Stryker, Susan (2008) Transgender History. New York: Seal Press.Google Scholar
Thom, Kai Cheng (2016) Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars. Montreal, QC: Metonymy Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, Hunter S. (1998) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Thornton, Jeanne (2021) Summer Fun. New York: Soho Press.Google Scholar
Van Zyl, Susan (2002) Psychoanalysis and the Archive: Derrida’s Archive Fever. In Hamilton, C., Harris, V., Taylor, J., Pickover, M., Reid, G., and Saleh, R. (eds.) Refiguring the Archive. New York: Springer, 3960.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Velocci, Beans (2024) Denaturing Cisness, or, Toward Trans History as Method. In Heaney, E. (ed.) Feminism against Cisness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 108133.Google Scholar
Von Reinhold, Shola (2020) LOTE. London: Jacaranda.Google Scholar
Whitehead, Joshua (2018) Jonny Appleseed. Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp.Google Scholar
wilson-yang, jia qing (2016) Small Beauty. Montreal, QC: Metonymy Press.Google Scholar

Save element to Kindle

To save this element to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

TransGenre
  • Aaron Hammes, Case Western Reserve University, Ohio
  • Online ISBN: 9781009502191
Available formats
×

Save element to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

TransGenre
  • Aaron Hammes, Case Western Reserve University, Ohio
  • Online ISBN: 9781009502191
Available formats
×

Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

TransGenre
  • Aaron Hammes, Case Western Reserve University, Ohio
  • Online ISBN: 9781009502191
Available formats
×