What is the conceptual formation trans*, and what can it do? While transgender studies is oriented against providing definitive answers, the field does possess a history and an emergent set of critical tools, both similar to and yet divergent from the more institutionally embraced field of queer studies. Drawing on Susan Stryker’s characterization of transgender studies as queer theory’s “evil twin,” this talk explores the critical relation enacted between the two fields: Rather than envisioning them as opposites, it explores their relation as a fruitful paradox in which each discourse problematizes and yet enlivens the other’s claims. It then demonstrates trans* analytics through a reading of John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982).

Presented by Cáel M. Keegan, Assistant Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Integrative, Religious, and Intercultural Studies at Grand Valley State University. He is the author of Lana and Lilly Wachowski: Sensing Transgender (University of Illinois Press, 2018) and coeditor of Somatechnics 8.1, “Cinematic Bodies.” His writing has also appeared in Genders, Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture, Transgender Studies Quarterly, Mediekultur, Spectator, and the Journal of Homosexuality. He currently serves as Co-Chair of the Queer and Trans Caucus of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

Keegan is also a panelist on the Diversity in Film Panel at the Chaz and Roger Ebert Symposium on Friday, September 27.