This book represents the vanguard of new work in the rapidly growing arena of Trans Studies. Thematically organised, it brings together studies from an international, cross-disciplinary range of contributors to address a range of questions pertinent to the emergence of trans lives and discourses. Examining the ways in which the emergence of trans challenges, develops and extends understandings of gender and reconfigures everyday lives, it asks how trans lives and discourses articulate and contest with issues of rights, education and popular common-sense. With attention to the question of how trans has shaped and been shaped by new modes of social action and networking, The Emergence of Trans also explores what the proliferation of trans representation across multiple media forms and public discourse suggests about the wider cultural moment, and considers the challenges presented for health care, social policy, gender and sexuality theory, and everyday articulations of identity. As such, it will appeal to scholars and students of gender and sexuality studies, as well as activists, professionals and individuals interested in trans lives and discourses.
Ruth Pearce is a Research Fellow in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds, UK. Her research explores issues of inequality, marginalisation, power and political struggle from a trans feminist perspective. She is also the author of Understanding Trans Health: Discourse, Power and Possibility.
Igi Moon is Associate Fellow in Sociology at the University of Warwick, UK. They have written on therapy, sexuality and gender in Feeling Queer: Queer Feelings: Radical Approaches to Counselling Sex, Sexuality and Gender and are editor of Counselling Ideologies: Queer Challenges to Heteronormativity. They represent the British Psychological Society as Chair of the Coalition Against Conversion Therapy.
Kat Gupta is Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Roehampton, UK. Their research uses corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis to explore representation, marginalisation and power, with a particular focus on LGBT, queer and gender issues.
Deborah Lynn Steinberg was Professor of Gender, Culture and Popular Media in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick, UK. She wrote widely on gender and sexuality politics, with books including Border Patrols: Policing the Boundaries of Heterosexuality (with D. Epstein and R. Johnson) and Bodies in Glass: Genetics, Eugenics, Embryo Ethics as well as on politics and public mourning in Mourning Diana: Nation, Culture and the Performance of Grief (with A. Kear) and Blairism and the War of Persuasion (with R. Johnson). She was also the author of Genes and the Bio-imaginary.
