
How We Make Each Other
Trans Life at the Edge of the University
Perry Zurn(Author)
Duke University Press
Published on 7. January 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
328 pages
978-1-4780-3130-7 (ISBN)
Description
Trans people have always lived in the cracks of institutions-and the university is no exception. In How We Make Each Other, Perry Zurn tells the stories of how trans people make and live their lives at the edges of the university in ways that sometimes lead to policy change but always leave participants and institutions different than they were before. Using the Five Colleges in Massachusetts as a case study, Zurn notes that Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, have been at the forefront of developing trans-inclusive policies in higher education, often in response to student organizing. Zurn focuses on the stories of trans students, staff, faculty, and community members within and alongside these institutions, exploring how they have built themselves and each other. Drawing on official archives as well as over 100 interviews, Zurn shows how trans people in the Five Colleges have made history, forged resistance habits, and cultivated hope.
Reviews / Votes
"Trans life grows in impossible places. In How We Make Each Other, Perry Zurn charts a rhizomatic story of how trans life in excess of liberal scripts of inclusion has and might yet grow in the university-one such impossible place. I cannot wait to teach this book, to nourish and provide historicity to my students' agitation, their unruly sociality, and their sense that another university is possible---is, in fact, what they make together every day." - Cameron Awkward-Rich, author of (The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment) "In giving careful attention to the ingenuity and radicality of trans makers and movements, Perry Zurn is simultaneously documenting and creating new epistemologies of transness. He helps us read transness in the university not as a problem but as a jubilant more-ness beyond the dichotomy of problem and solution. In his compelling, lovely, and often heartbreaking renderings, trans life is a form of creation that draws on direct action, linguistic experimentation, and joyful solidarity to find alliances and forge community. This book will be cherished and loved by many people for a very long time to come." - Gayle Salamon, author of (The Life and Death of Latisha King: A Critical Phenomenology of Transphobia) "This book is lovely! Perry Zurn has an unusually graceful way with words, and what he's saying is powerful stuff." - Sandy Stone, author, artist, performer, engineer, and debonair trans-about-townMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
North Carolina
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
8 illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
531 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4780-3130-7 (9781478031307)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Perry Zurn is Visiting Associate Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Cornell University, Provost Associate Professor of Philosophy at American University, author of Curiosity and Power: The Politics of Inquiry, coauthor of Curious Minds: The Power of Connection, and coeditor of Trans Philosophy.
Content
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Of Small Places and Edge Ecologies 1
Part I
1. Problematizing Trans Inclusion 21
2. Becoming a Trans Problem 35
3. Mobilizing Trans Poetics 49
Part II
4. Attunements to Trans History 65
5. Dust 83
6. Stash 95
7. Scatter 107
Part III
8. Attunements to Trans Resistance 121
9. Thread 135
10. Glue 149
11. Pebble 161
Part IV.
12 Attunements to Trans Hope 175
13. Fatigue 191
14. Risk 203
15. World 213
Coda 227
Epilogue 235
Chronology 239
Bibliography 277
Index 301
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Of Small Places and Edge Ecologies 1
Part I
1. Problematizing Trans Inclusion 21
2. Becoming a Trans Problem 35
3. Mobilizing Trans Poetics 49
Part II
4. Attunements to Trans History 65
5. Dust 83
6. Stash 95
7. Scatter 107
Part III
8. Attunements to Trans Resistance 121
9. Thread 135
10. Glue 149
11. Pebble 161
Part IV.
12 Attunements to Trans Hope 175
13. Fatigue 191
14. Risk 203
15. World 213
Coda 227
Epilogue 235
Chronology 239
Bibliography 277
Index 301