Transitioning Publics

TRANSITIONING PUBLICS engages two forms of transitioning simultaneously: the shifting political landscape of transgender media representation in North America, and the technological shifts that impact forms of representation and information dissemination such as movements from film to video and the Internet. Through critical engagement with moving-image work made by and about transgender people outside of and often in spite of the mainstream, each section of the project considers various aesthetic, formal, and political impulses that contribute to the construction of transgender as both identity category and socio-political event.

While transgender studies was originally articulated as a movement to locate and legitimize transgender subject matter, identities, authors, and politics in the academic mainstream, TRANSITIONING PUBLICS aligns with the call made by Susan Stryker, Paisley Currah, and Lisa Jean Moore to move beyond discussions of trans- centered exclusively on gender (2008). To that end, the written components of the project are accompanied by a short film, Between You and Me. Employing home video scholarship alongside canonical sexuality studies theory, Between You and Me expands upon the aforementioned theoretical charge in trans studies by critically and creatively interrogating the intersectional relationship between moral panics, desire, and identity through alternative digital modes; namely a 10 minute film with 2 additional video components, scheduled for online release with CBC Short Docs in July 2016.

TRANSITIONING PUBLICS engages two forms of transitioning simultaneously: the shifting political landscape of transgender media representation in North America, and the technological shifts that impact forms of representation and information dissemination such as movements from film to video and the Internet. Through critical engagement with moving-image work made by and about transgender people outside of and often in spite of the mainstream, each section of the project considers various aesthetic, formal, and political impulses that contribute to the construction of transgender as both identity category and socio-political event.

While transgender studies was originally articulated as a movement to locate and legitimize transgender subject matter, identities, authors, and politics in the academic mainstream, TRANSITIONING PUBLICS aligns with the call made by Susan Stryker, Paisley Currah, and Lisa Jean Moore to move beyond discussions of trans- centered exclusively on gender (2008). To that end, the written components of the project are accompanied by a short film, Between You and Me. Employing home video scholarship alongside canonical sexuality studies theory, Between You and Me expands upon the aforementioned theoretical charge in trans studies by critically and creatively interrogating the intersectional relationship between moral panics, desire, and identity through alternative digital modes; namely a 10 minute film with 2 additional video components, scheduled for online release with CBC Short Docs in July 2016.