27 April 2010
Susan Stryker: Transgender History – a review
http://zagria.blogspot.com/2010/04/susan-stryker-transgender-history.htmlSusan Stryker took a doctorate in US History at University of California at Berkeley in 1992 with a dissertation was on the origins of Mormonism as a case study in the formation of identity-based communities. She completed transition to female the same year. She was a co-founder of Transgender Nation. She is the author of Queer Pulp: Perverse Passion in the Golden Age of the Paperback and Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area, and edited the transgender studies special issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. She is the executive Director of the GLBT Historical Society, and has a fellowship in Sexuality Studies in the History Department at Stanford University. She wrote the introduction to the Cleis Press reprint of Christine Jorgensen's autobiography. She appeared in Monika Treut's film, Gendernauts, 1999, and wrote and narrated the short film Shotgun, 1997 about a female couple, one of whom is intersex, and co-wrote, co-directed and narrated the film Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria, 2005. She has taught at Harvard, UC-Santa Cruz and Simon Frazer universities, is currently Associate Professor of Gender Studies at Indiana University.
The first observation is that the title needs two caveats. This is a not a history of transgendered persons and their achievements in show biz, music, sex work, computing, health work, literature, the law, religion, the military, police work, teaching, sports etc etc. It is a history of almost only trans activism. Secondly it is restricted to one country.
