Transgender discourses have gained significant global traction in both offline and online worlds in recent years. A rising tide of transphobia has been seen in celebrity endorsements of ‘gender critical’ ideology, politico-legal regress in some contexts, and calls for such regress in others. At the same time, the hyper-visibility of transgender identities and politics have led to renewed movements of empowerment, allyship, and support among – inter alia – activists, celebrities, corporations, and nation states. These discursive entanglements with transgender identities, politics, and practices often construct dichotomies – between vulnerability and predatoriness, choice and inherence, joy and despair. The oppositional nature of such discursive constructions reflects an ongoing and increasing polarization between ideological positions on transgender recognition, which has been further exacerbated by changes in an ever-more politicized mediascape.
This volume represents the first attempt at an over-arching collection focusing specifically on transgender discourses. In essence, the volume is intended as a means of capturing a global moment of hyper-visibility in an effort to bring together work that both celebrates transgender lives and challenges transphobia – in global, national, and local contexts – from a discursive perspective. Moreover, this volume takes one step towards a specifically trans* discourse studies, an interdisciplinary constellation of research that focuses explicitly and solely on the ways in which transgender subjectivities shape and are shaped by the social world.
Call for Abstracts:
All scholars who engage with transgender identities, politics, and practices from the perspective of discourse studies, broadly construed, are welcome to submit a chapter proposal for this collection. However, this volume also explicitly seeks to promote the research and voices of trans* and non- binary scholars, scholars from historically marginalized and minoritized backgrounds, scholars from the Global South, and early career scholars.
This volume is intended to cover a wide range of themes and topics relating to transgender discourses. This volume is equally interested in chapters examining discourses produced by transgender people and those produced about transgender identities, politics, and practices.
Contributions are encouraged on the following topics, though the list is by no means exhaustive:
- Mediatizing transgender identities and politics
- Transgender activism online and offline
- Legal and political discourses of the transgender body
- Trans* joy and celebrating transgender lives
- Transgender bodies in sport and leisure
- Non-binary identities, politics, and practices
- Transgender medicine and healthcare
- Institutional discourses of transgender inclusion and exclusion (i.e. education; prisons)
- Celebrity and/or corporate allyship
- Historical and historicized transgender discourse(s)
- Discursively constructing transgender futures
Proposal submission:
Each proposal should include:
- A title for the proposed chapter
- An abstract of 200-300 words, summarizing the structure and primary argument(s) of the proposed contribution
- The name and affiliation (where applicable) of the contributing author(s) and an email address where a corresponding author may be contacted
Send your proposal to Lexi Webster (l.webster@soton.ac.uk) – using “Abstract: Transgender Discourses” as the subject line of your email – by September 30, 2023.
- Accepted proposals will form the basis of a proposal to Routledge, who have expressed interest in the volume.
- It is anticipated that decisions on proposed abstracts will be made by October 30, 2023, with the full proposal submitted to Routledge in November.
If you have any questions about the collection or your proposed contribution, please contact Lexi by email.