CANCELED DUE TO ILLNESS Perspectives and approaches of Trans Studies in the Federal Republic of Germany – possible changes of perspective in one’s own research.

***The event needs to be canceled due to health reasons. We will schedule a new date and advertise it as soon as possible***

Transgender Studies is an interdisciplinary field that deals with the gender diversity of human beings in historically specific fields and theories. They emerged slightly later than Queer Studies in the USA and have increasingly developed in the Federal Republic of Germany since the 2000s.

In this lecture, central perspectives of Trans Studies will be presented on the basis of socio-political and theoretical contexts, and examples will be given of how the intellectual influences and methodological orientation of Trans Studies are reflected in individual studies. Central fields of this research area will be presented and participants will be invited to reflect on the potential of Trans Studies for their own research.

According to historian and Transgender Studies pioneer Susan Stryker, Transgender Studies examines human gender diversity in historically specific fields and theories, re-articulations of gender and de-naturalizations of normative assumptions of gender, and the transformation of embodied difference into social hierarchies, including the effects of these systems of power on ‘gendered’ people (Stryker 2006, 3). The potential of Trans Studies is to analyze reproduction and effects of heteronormative hegemony and, ideally, hegemonic relations that are complexly interwoven with it, as well as to show worlds in which gender-, if not human-, diversity can be lived or made livable.

The speaker Dr. Adrian de Silva works as a research associate in the fields of trans and queer studies at the Institute for Social Research and Interventions (ISI) at the University of Luxembourg. His research focuses on processes of minoritization of uncommon genders and sexualities in liberal democracies and on contestations to bring about social change in these fields.

The lecture event is part of the cooperation between Pro Exzellenzia plus and the Center Gender & Diversity (ZGD).

Date: June 29, 2022, 14:00-16:00 hrs.
Format: online via Zoom
Registration via: Website Pro Exzellenzia.