Past Events
2022
Volatile Contexts: Identity, Technology and Politics in a Moment of Danger
April 13
Presented in Conjunction with We Are The Voices
Internationally acclaimed technologist and network security expert, Chelsea Manning,
engages in a wide ranging public conversation with event host and Barbara Lee Chair
in Women’s Leadership, Dr. Susan Stryker. The talk-show style event explores questions
ranging from national security and surveillance, artificial intelligence, trans rights,
critiques of the carceral complex, and prison abolitionism.
The Wrong End of The Telescope: a conversation with Rabih Alameddine and Susan Stryker
March 31
Presented in Conjunction with We Are The Voices
Queer, Bay Area-based author, Rabih Alameddine joins Susan Stryker to discuss his
latest novel, The Wrong End of The Telescope (2021). The novel centers around trans protagonist, Mina Simpson, a Lebanese doctor,
who arrives at the infamous Moria refugee camp on Lesbos, Greece, after being urgently
summoned for help. The wide ranging discussion of Rabih’s work and career includes
a reading from the new book and an open-ended Q&A.
Temporary Utopias: Discussing the Films of Cary Cronenwett
February 17
Presented in Conjunction with We Are The Voices
A conversation about Cronenwett’s two films, Maggots and Men (2009) and Peace of Mind
(2015). Set in a mythologized, post-revolutionary Russia, Maggots and Men re-imagines
the 1921 uprising of the Kronstadt sailors, re-enacted with an ensemble featuring
trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming actors. A collaboration with art director,
Flo McGarrell, the film was intended to be the first of many projects together. However,
while starting their next film, an adaptation of the novel Kathy Goes to Haiti, Flo
McGarrell’s unexpected passing during the 2010 Haiti earthquake shifts the film into
a documentary of McGarrell’s life. Peace of Mind explores McGarrell’s enormous impact
on the people surrounding him and reflects on the magic of Cronenwett’s brief friendship
with McGarrell during the making of Maggots and Men, which was itself a temporary
utopia.
2021
Play†Prey: A conversation with Leila Weefur & Susan Stryker
December 2
Presented in conjunction with We Are the Voices.
Oakland-based artist, curator, and writer Leila Weefur in conversation with Susan
Stryker about Weefur's interdisciplinary work including the upcoming project PLAY†PREY,
a gospel presented as a multi-channel film experience, that recounts a relationship
between God, the Church, and a queer Black child.
Poetic Operations: a conversation with micha cárdenas and Susan Stryker
October 28
Presented in conjunction with We Are the Voices.
micha cárdenas, author of Poetic Operations: Trans of Color Art in Digital Media (forthcoming
from Duke University Press), and Susan Stryker discuss cárdenas’s new book and trans
of color poetics.
Transgress Press: Trystan Cotten, Kim Green, and Brynn Tannehill in conversation with
Susan Stryker
September 23
Presented in conjunction with We Are the Voices.
Professor and publisher Trystan Cotten and two of his recently published authors Kim
Green (Vicissitudes) and Brynn Tannehill (American Fascism: How the GOP Is Subverting Democracy) in conversation with Susan Stryker about Transgress Press, an Oakland-based indie
publisher of trans queer feminist books. The conversation and Q&A discuss Transgress's
social entrepreneurial vision and specialization in books that push the norms and
boundaries of conventional thought.
Trans Aesthetics: McKenzie Wark & Shola von Reinhold in conversation with Susan Stryker
April 8
Presented in conjunction with We Are the Voices.
Please join host Susan Stryker, Barbara Lee Distinguished Chair in Women's Leadership,
for a conversation between media theorist McKenzie Wark of the New School for Social
Research (The Hacker Manifesto; Reverse Cowgirl) and novelist Shola von Reinhold (LOTE), about Black and femme trans cultural production and world-making.
My Gender is Black?: The Speculative Refusals of Black Queer/Trans/Feminism, a conversation
between Tavia Nyong’o and Susan Stryker
March 18
Contemporary Black art, thought, and activism is infused with feminism, queerness
and transness like never before. But this dissidence is also frequently lived through
modalities that reject white normative frameworks of sex and gender, declaring, with
non-binary writer Hari Ziyad, that “My Gender is Black.” What recent history has set
the stage for this particular conjuncture? How have queer/trans/feminist refusals
drawn from and contributed to critical theories of antiblackness? In particular, how
have these refusals modulated afropessimist and afrofuturist tendencies? Refusal and
reticence, this talk argues, has shaped Black responses to the ongoing destruction
and devaluation of Black life even in a period of growing homo- and trans-normativity.
Black queer/trans/feminist refusals must dynamically negotiate despair on the one
hand, and, on the other, forms of political engagement that risks reproducing an antiblack
world. Black aesthetics, the talk concludes, has become an increasingly important
site for staging this tension, if not fully resolving it. Rather than representation
in liberal humanist terms, art affords non-binary blackness possibilities of opacity,
abstraction, speculation, and collectivity.
Trans is Black and Black is Trans?: C. Riley Snorton and Rod Ferguson in Conversation
with Susan Stryker
February 18
Presented in conjunction with We Are the Voices.
Part of Mills College Black History Month 2021 programming, BHM21.
In celebration of Black History Month, the Mellon-funded “We Are the Voices” public
arts and humanities series and the Mills College Trans Studies Speakers Series are
pleased to welcome Professor Rod Ferguson of Yale University (Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique) and Professor C. Riley Snorton of University of Chicago (Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity). They are in discussion with Susan Stryker, Barbara Lee Distinguished Chair in Women's
Leadership, on the emergence of Black Trans Studies, the Black Trans Lives Matter
Movement, and Black Trans Histories.
ln Search of Our Black Queer Ancestors: a Conversation between Historian-Journalist
Channing Gerard Joseph and Susan Stryker
February 4
Part of Mills College Black History Month 2021 programming, BHM21.
The work of Channing Gerard Joseph (lecturer, University of Southern California) is
an effort to recover and reclaim the histories and cultural contributions of queer
Black Americans, particularly the queer community around William Dorsey Swann, a formerly
enslaved Black man who was the first-documented drag queen. Joseph's research also
explores the lives of Mary Jones/Peter Sewally, Frances Thompson, and other Black
queer figures of the 19th century.
2020
Confessions of the Fox, A Conversation between Author Jordy Rosenberg and Susan Stryker
November 5
Presented in conjunction with We Are the Voices.
Jordy Rosenberg (professor of English, University of Massachusetts, Amherst) had a
breakout success with his first novel, 2018’s Confessions of the Fox, a faux memoir
of the 18th-century folk hero Jack Sheppard (the real-life inspiration for the Mack
the Knife character in Brecht’s Threepenny Opera) who is discovered to be a transmasculine
person. Rosenberg will be in conversation with Distinguished Chair Susan Stryker,
whose fall seminar at Mills is "Trans-Historical Meta-Fictional Narrative in Jordy
Rosenberg’s Confessions of the Fox."
Stalled! Project, A Conversation between Joel Sanders, Seb Choe and Susan Stryker
October 21
Joel Sanders (professor, Yale School of Architecture, and principal, Joel Sanders
Architects) is founder of MixDesign, an inclusive design firm that tackles social
justice from a design perspective. With Seb Choe (associate director, MixDesign) and
team member Susan Stryker, Sanders will be discussing the Stalled! Project, which
proposes public toilet design prototypes that can accommodate a wide range of users.
MixDesign’s more recent work explores the need for post-pandemic designs for college
campuses.
The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers, A Conversation between
South African Author Mark Gevisser and Susan Stryker
September 23
In his book The Pink Line, South African journalist Mark Gevisser (A Legacy of Liberation:
Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream) traces a planet-spanning fissure
that runs through the intimate dimensions of life, documenting the sometimes literally
war-torn rift zones where so-called "traditional values" are being mobilized by states
to combat trans, queer, and feminist social movements. Join the Mark Gevisser and
host Susan Stryker for a conversation about the weaponization of trans issues in these
"pink line" struggles.
Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen, A Film Screening and Discussion between Director
Sam Feder and Susan Stryker
September 9
Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen is a 2019 Netflix Original documentary film directed by Sam Feder and Executive Producer
Laverne Cox, featuring clips from more than a century of transgender cinematic representation
and commentary by leading contemporary transgender voices including Lilly Wachowski,
Yance Ford, Jen Richards, and Angelica Ross. The screening begins at 6:00 pm PDT,
followed by a discussion and audience Q&A featuring director Sam Feder, consulting
producer and Mills Distinguished Chair Susan Stryker, and additional cast and crew
members.
