(POSTPONED) Beans Velocci, Yale University, Sexuality/Gender/Queer Studies talk

Tuesday, March 17, 2020 - 5:00pm to 6:30pm

Annenberg School of Communication
3620 Walnut Street, ANNS 111

This location is ADA accessible

Apparent Exceptions Occur: Trans Methods for the History of Sex Classification

Trans histories have primarily focused on trans people, but what happens if you make trans history a method, not a subject? This talk proposes that examining the history of sex classification through a trans lens shows that no forms of sex and gender, including what might be considered cisgender or not-trans, pre-exist in clear-cut categories without constant iterative management. Though scientific research has repeatedly dredged up sex and gender anomalies that could threaten the idea of binary and stable sex, norms of self-evident maleness and femaleness have endured because the ways that countless forms of life fail to fit those categories—and the work that goes into making them fit—have been rendered invisible. Using examples from nineteenth-century animal research, I excavate the often contradictory logics of racial hierarchizing and scientific expertise-building that have made sex classification a site not of binary consensus, but persistent uncertainty.

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