Bibliographies
The following bibliographies highlight key scholarship in North American trans cinema and audiovisual media studies. They are not meant to be comprehensive. To suggest additional works, please email us.
Quick Links:
- External Bibliographies
- Intro to Trans Studies
- Intro to Trans Cinema Studies
- Trans-Made Audiovisual Media
- Trans Spectatorship
- Trans Representation
External Bibliographies
TMS: A Bibliography of Transgender Media Studies by communications scholar Thomas J. Billard (University of Southern California)
Digital Trans Reading List by information studies scholar Oliver Haimson (University of Michigan)
Intro to Trans Studies
“Keywords” Issue. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 1, no. 1-2 (May 1, 2014).
Boellstorff, Tom, Mauro Cabral, Micha Cárdenas, Trystan Cotten, Eric A. Stanley, Kalaniopua Young, and Aren Z. Aizura. “Decolonizing Transgender: A Roundtable Discussion.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 1, no. 3 (August 1, 2014): 419–39.
Hale, Jacob. “Suggested Rules for Non-Transsexuals Writing about Transsexuals, Transsexuality, Transsexualism, or Trans.” SandyStone.com, November 18, 2009.
Keegan, Cáel M. “Getting Disciplined: What’s Trans* About Queer Studies Now?” Journal of Homosexuality (October 22, 2018): 1–14.
Snorton, C. Riley, and Jin Haritaworn. “Trans Necropolitics: A Transnational Reflection on Violence, Death and the Trans of Color Afterlife.” In Transgender Studies Reader 2, edited by Susan Stryker and Aren Z. Aizura, 66–76. New York: Routledge, 2013.
Stryker, Susan. “(De)Subjugated Knowledges: An Introduction to Transgender Studies.” In The Transgender Studies Reader, edited by Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle, 1–18. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Stryker, Susan, and Aren Z. Aizura. “Introduction: Transgender Studies 2.0.” In The Transgender Studies Reader 2, edited by Susan Stryker and Aren Z Aizura, 1–12. New York and London: Routledge, 2013.
Stryker, Susan. “Terms and Concepts.” In Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution, 2nd ed, 10-40. Berkeley: Seal Press, 2017.
Vowel, Chelsea. “All My Queer Relations: Language, Culture, and Two-Spirit Identity.” In Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Issues in Canada, 106–14. Winnipeg, Manitoba: HighWater Press, 2016.
Intro to Trans Cinema Studies
Horak, Laura. “Trans Studies.” Feminist Media Histories 4, no. 2 (April 1, 2018): 201–6. https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2018.4.2.201.
Keegan, Cáel M., Laura Horak, and Eliza Steinbock. “Cinematic/Trans*/Bodies Now (and Then, and to Come).” Somatechnics 8, no. 1 (March 1, 2018): 1–13.
Leung, Helen Hok-Sze. “Always in Translation: Trans Cinema across Languages.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 3, no. 3–4 (November 1, 2016): 433–47.
Leung, Helen Hok-Sze. “Film.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 1, no. 1–2 (May 2014): 86–88.
Leung, Helen Hok-Sze. “Trans On Screen.” In Transgender China, edited by Howard Chiang, 183–98. Palgrave Macmillan US, 2012.
Steinbock, Eliza. “Introduction. Disjunction and Conjunction: Thinking Trans through the Cinematic.” In Shimmering Images: Trans Cinema, Embodiment and the Aesthetics of Change, 1–25. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2019.
Steinbock, Eliza. “Toward Trans Cinema.” In The Routledge Companion to Cinema & Gender, edited by Kristin Lené Hole, Dijana Jelaca, E. Ann Kaplan, and Patrice Petro, 395–406. Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017.
Tourmaline, Eric A. Stanley, and Johanna Burton. “Known Unknowns: An Introduction to Trap Door.” In Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility, edited by Tourmaline, Eric A. Stanley, and Johanna Burton, xv–xxvi. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2017.
Williams, Jonathan Rachel. “What (and Where) Is Trans Cinema?” In Trans Cinema, Trans Viewers, 45–68. Melbourne, Australia: University of Melbourne, Faculty of Arts, School of Culture and Communication, 2011.
Trans-Made Audiovisual Media
Bailey, Moya, micha cárdenas, Laura Horak, Lokeilani Kaimana, Cáel M. Keegan, Geneveive Newman, Roxanne Samer, and Raffi Sarkissian. "Sense8 Roundtable" Spectator: The University of Southern California Journal of Film & Television 37, no. 2 (Fall 2017): 74–88.
Davy, Zowie, and Eliza Steinbock. “‘Sexing Up’ Bodily Aesthetics: Notes towards Theorizing Trans Sexuality.” In Sexualities: Past Reflections, Future Directions, edited by Sally Hines and Yvette Taylor, 266–85. Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2012.
Estrada, Gabriel. "Two-Spirit Mexica Youth and Transgender Mixtec/Muxe Media: La Mission (2009), Two Spirit Injunuity (2013), and Libertad (2015)." Journal of Religion & Film 21, no. 1 (April 1, 2017).
Gossett, Reina, Eric A. Stanley, and Johanna Burton, eds. Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2017.
Horak, Laura. "Tracing the History of Trans and Gender Variant Filmmakers." Spectator: The University of Southern California Journal of Film & Television 37, no. 2 (Fall 2017): 9–20.
Horak, Laura."Trans on YouTube: Intimacy, Visibility, Temporality." TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 1, no. 4 (November 1, 2014): 572–85.
Keegan, Cael M. Lana and Lilly Wachowski: Sensing Transgender. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2018.
Miller, Jordan F. ""I Wanna Know Where the Rule Book Is": YouTube as a Site of Counternarratives to Transnormativity." Journal of Homosexuality (June 12, 2018): 1–23.
Rosskam, Jules. "Making Trans Cinema: A Roundtable Discussion with Felix Endara, Reina Gossett, Chase Joynt, Jess Mac and Madsen Minax." Somatechnics 8, no. 1 (March 1, 2018): 14–26.
Steinbock, Eliza. "“Look!” But also, “Touch!”: Theorizing Images of Trans-Eroticism Beyond a Politics of Visual Essentialism." In Porno-Graphics & Porno-Tactics: Desire, Affect, and Representation in Pornography, edited by Eirini Avramopoulou and Irene Peano, 59–75. Punctum Books, 2016.
Steinbock, Eliza. Shimmering Images: Trans Cinema, Embodiment and the Aesthetics of Change. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2019.
Summers, Robert. “Queer Archives, Queer Movements: The Visual and Bodily Archives of Vaginal Davis.” Radical History Review 2015, no. 122 (May 1, 2015): 47–53.
Trans Spectatorship
Bastian Cole, Joshua. “Passing Glances: Recognizing the Trans Gaze in Mulholland Drive.” Somatechnics 8, no. 1 (March 1, 2018): 79–94. https://doi.org/10.3366/soma.2018.0238.
Halberstam, Jack. “The Transgender Look.” In In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, 76–96. New York: New York University Press, 2005.
Keegan, Cáel M. "Revisitation: a trans phenomenology of the media image" MedieKultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research 32, no. 61 (December 15, 2016): 26–41.
Williams, Jonathan Rachel. Trans Cinema, Trans Viewers. Melbourne, Australia: University of Melbourne, Faculty of Arts, School of Culture and Communication, 2011.
Trans Representation
Baril, Alexandre. “Confessing Society, Confessing Cis-Tem: Rethinking Consent through Intimate Images of Trans* People in the Media.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 39, no. 2 (June 30, 2018): 1–25.
Bettcher, Talia Mae. "Evil Deceivers and Make-Believers: On Transphobic Violence and the Politics of Illusion." Hypatia 22, no. 3 (August 1, 2007): 43–65.
Copier, Laura, and Eliza Steinbock. “On Not Really Being There: Trans*Presence/Absence in Dallas Buyers Club.” Feminist Media Studies 18, no. 5 (September 3, 2018): 923–41.
Feder, Sam, and Alexandra Juhasz. “Does Visibility Equal Progress? A Conversation on Trans Activist Media.” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media 57 (Fall 2016).
Halberstam, Jack. “Trans* Representations.” In Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability, 84–106. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018.
Horak, Laura. “Visibility and Vulnerability: Translatina World-Making in the Salt Mines and Wildness.” In The Power of Vulnerability: Mobilising Affect in Feminist, Queer and Anti-Racist Media Cultures, edited by Anu Koivunen, Katariina Kyrölä, and Ingrid Ryberg, eds 95–115. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018.
Keegan, Cáel M. "History, Disrupted: The aesthetic gentrification of queer and trans cinema."Social Alternatives 35, no. 3 (2016): 50–56.
Leung, Helen Hok-Sze. “Unsung Heroes. Reading Transgender Subjectivities in Hong Kong Action Cinema” In The Transgender Studies Reader 2, edited by Susan Stryker and Aren Z Aizura, 685–97. New York and London: Routledge, 2013.
Morrison, Josh. “Cutting Camp with Killing: ‘Bad’ Feelings, Refusing Respectability, and Homeopathic Camp.” Somatechnics 8, no. 1 (March 1, 2018): 95–112. https://doi.org/10.3366/soma.2018.0239.
Namaste, Viviane. “Beyond Image Content: Examining Transsexuals’ Access to the Media.” In Sex Change, Social Change: Reflections on Identity, Institutions, and Imperialism, 41–59. Toronto: Women’s Press, 2005.
Oishi, Eve. "Reading Realness: Paris is Burning, Wildness, and Queer and Transgender Documentary Practice." In A Companion to Contemporary Documentary Film, edited by Alexandra Juhasz and Alisa Lebow, 252–70. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015.
Richards, Jen. “Matt Bomer Playing A Trans Woman Is More Than Problematic—It’s Dangerous.” NewNowNext, June 16, 2017. http://www.newnownext.com/matt-bomer-anything-transgender/06/2017/.
Sasala, An. “Panic! Humanity’s Cis-Heteronormative Fear of the Transgender Android.” Somatechnics 8, no. 1 (March 1, 2018): 64–78. https://doi.org/10.3366/soma.2018.0237.
Serano, Julia. “Skirt Chasers: Why the Media Depicts the Trans Revolution in Lipstick and Heels.” In Transgender Studies Reader Volume 2, edited by Susan Stryker and Aren Z. Aizura, 226–33. New York and London: Routledge, 2013.
Serano, Julia. “Trans Woman Manifesto.” In Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, 11–20. Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2007.
Snorton, C. Riley. “DeVine’s Cut: Public Memory and the Politics of Martyrdom.” In Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.
Stryker, Susan. "We Who Are Sexy: Christine Jorgensen's transsexual whiteness in the postcolonial Philippines." Social Semiotics 19, no. 1 (March 1, 2009): 79–91.