TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly
vol.1, no.4: "Trans* Cultural Production"

The arts have served as a cultural arena for imagining, creating, and
proliferating transgender experiences and communities around the world.
As part of its inaugural year, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly (pub.
Duke University Press) will feature a special issue examining trans
cultural production in art, film, dance, design, architecture,
literature, and music. We seek papers that critically analyze the
current state, history, and significance of these expressive forms as
they address, depict, and are mobilized by trans subjects broadly
defined, including people whose gender/sex expression is not informed
primarily by contemporary Western constructions and conventions. The
issue will feature trans makers and communities alongside essays
exploring cultural production by non-trans makers as such production
impacts trans lives, trans politics, and/or trans theory. We invite
submissions exploring the repercussions and resonances of trans
representation in non-trans contexts as well as work developing trans
interpretations of creative work not originally intended to engage
specifically trans* people or concerns.

Rather than a survey of best practices or major figures, the issue aims
to offer a forum to examine the wider issues attending to the
representation of trans in the arts and to demonstrate the value of
trans as a heuristic lens for interpreting creative work more
generally. While the focus of the issue is scholarly research, we also
hope to include a small selection of shorter, less formal essays that
engage with critical issues in trans* cultural production from
curatorial, marketing, and practitioner perspectives.

Possible areas of inquiry include but are not limited to:

- the history of transgender/transsexual/gender-nonconforming
representations in the arts and their varying receptions
- trans living as aesthetic practice
- transnational receptions and interpretations of gender and sexual
representations
- the dominance of autobiography and portraiture in the history of
trans representations in the West; new directions for cultural
production
- the imag(in)ing of new bodily morphologies
- bioarts
- trans performance/trans performers
- examinations of trans cultural production that do not rely on the
representation of human bodies
- the imaging of trans communities, both real and utopian
- the effects of the global circulation of trans cultural production;
the mainstreaming of particular trans visibilities
- distinctions and convergences between trans and queer interpretative
approaches to the arts
- the marketing and circulation of trans fiction, self-help
literature, and other print media
- curating trans communities
- trans as remix and appropriation (e.g. in relation to mainstream
film, advertising imagery, fashion and/or music)
- trans embodiment as/in relation to artistic form
- case studies of specific locales or sites that have supported trans
artistic communities

To be considered, please send submissions by April 15, 2013, to
tsqjournal@gmail.com along with a brief bio including name, postal
address, and any institutional affiliation. Completed texts are
encouraged, but an abstract may also be submitted in lieu of a full
paper. Abstracts should be no more than 250 words and should include a
brief statement of work completed on or relevant to the submission.
Illustrations should be included with both completed submissions and
abstracts.

Accepted authors will be contacted in May, with the full text of all
submissions due October 1, 2013. The expected range for scholarly
articles is 5000 to 7000 words and 1000 to 2000 words for shorter
critical essays and descriptive accounts. Peer review will be conducted
on all accepted submissions.

Any questions should be addressed by e-mail sent to all guest editors
for the issue: Julian Carter (California College of the Arts,
juliancarter@cca.edu), David Getsy (School of the Art Institute of
Chicago, dgetsy@saic.edu), and Trish Salah (University of Toronto,
trish.salah@utoronto.ca).