TT Telling TRans Syllabus Updated.docx
Telling Trans. German Sexology and Conceptions of Gender Variance in Modern Trans Self-Narratives
Since the mid-19th century, German-language sexology has played an incisive role in shaping understandings of gender variance in the Western world. In this course, we will take a close look at how early sexual sciences conceptualized non-normative sexuality and gender and how sexological ideas found entry into the (literary) self-narratives of gender variant people from Germany to Denmark and the United States. Focusing on the memoir genre—the most important genre of ‘telling trans’ in the 20th century—we critically reflect on the agency of trans writers and the potentials and limitations of (fictionalized) life writing. From N.O. Body in 1907 to Christine Jorgensen in the late 1960s, how has autobiographical writing by trans people propelled, transformed and contested sexological knowledge? Whose voices were made heard and what was the price of becoming visible?