Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 4 - Transgender Studies, or How to Do Things with Trans*

  • from Part II - Confluences
  • Edited by Siobhan B. Somerville, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Queer Studies
    Published online:
    02 June 2020
    Print publication:
    11 June 2020, pp 66-78

  • Summary

    What is transgender studies, and what are its major methods? While the field itself is oriented against definitive answers to such questions, transgender studies does indeed possess a history and an emergent set of critical tools, both similar to and yet divergent from the more institutionally embraced field of queer studies. Drawing on Janet Halley’s early mapping of each field’s claims as well as Susan Stryker’s characterization of transgender studies as queer theory’s “evil twin,” this chapter explores the critical relation enacted between the two fields, tracing relevant points of congruence and tension between their methods. Both like and yet unlike queer studies, trans* studies points up queer theory’s limitations while inverting many of its major premises. Rather than envisioning the fields as opposites, however, this chapter seeks to clarify their relation as a fruitful paradox in which each discourse problematizes and yet enlivens the other’s claims. It then concludes by demonstrating some of trans* studies’ core methods through a close reading of John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982).