Join GSSI and Susan Stryker for a conversation about her new book, Changing Gender.
From the groundbreaking trans scholar Susan Stryker, a provocative, genre-bending call to reconsider the story we tell about gender itself.
That gender is a hotly contested topic becomes ever clearer as antigender ideology continues to be mobilized by the far right and transgender people's lives are increasingly targeted. But what are we talking about when we talk about gender? Where did the concept itself come from, and where might it go? Susan Stryker invites readers to ride along on her lifelong quest to uncover what gender means and does. She traces the gender concept's roots in grammar and tells the story of how it transformed into a battleground of the culture wars. Poignant and deeply researched, lyrical and authoritative, Changing Gender is a book for our fraught time, exposing limiting assumptions about gender across the political spectrum and imagining what life might look like if some of those limitations were lifted. Ultimately, Stryker argues, to change gender is to change what it means to be human—and to change reality itself.
Susan will be in conversation with Rachel Schreiber, University Professor and GSSI Director.
Presented by The New School's Gender and Sexualities Studies Institute.
The Wolff Conference Room is wheelchair-accessible. There are wheelchair-accessible and all-gender bathrooms on the same floor as the conference room. Seating in the space can be changed as needed. Virtual attendance is not available for this event. ASL interpretation is available with advance notice.
Susan Stryker’s historical research, theoretical writings, media-making, activism, and academic field-building activities have helped shape the conversation on trans issues since the early 1990s. Stryker retired from the University of Arizona in 2020 and currently holds a distinguished visiting appointment at Stanford University's Michelle Clayman Institute for Gender Research. She is the author of many academic and general audience works, including Transgender History. She lives in San Francisco.
Rachel Schreiber is University Professor of Art, Media, and Cultural History and Director of the Gender and Sexualities Studies Institute at The New School. A US gender historian, Schreiber regularly writes on topics related to the intersections of gender and labor activism, gender and visual culture, and more. Her forthcoming book, Reproducing Justice: Visual Activism in the Era of Roe v. Wade will be published by NYU Press in 2027.
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