Research

The Trans Philosophy Project facilitates scholarly collaborations that produce original research in the field of trans philosophy and theory.

TRANS PHILOSOPHY: MEANING AND MATTERING

Edited by Perry Zurn, Andrea Pitts, Talia Mae Bettcher, PJ DiPietro

Recently, philosophers have had much to say about trans people. Whether as a new favorite thought experiment or a policy problem, a growing number of philosophers have turned to trans people as objects of curiosity and concern. This is within a broader cultural context of trans people gaining greater visibility but also coming under renewed social scrutiny and legislative backlash. Trans philosophers and allies, in turn, have become more vocal not only about the difficulties of being trans in philosophy, but about the imperative of a new field: trans philosophy. While significant philosophical work on trans issues has been done over the last several decades, trans philosophy is new.

Trans Philosophy: Meaning and Mattering will be the first authoritative collection to establish trans philosophy as a unique field of inquiry. It defines trans philosophy as philosophical work that is accountable to and illuminative of transgender experiences, histories, cultural production, and politics. The book will showcase work from a range of fresh and established voices in this nascent field. It will address a variety of topics (e.g. embodiment, identity, language, law, politics, transphobia), utilize diverse philosophical methods (e.g. analytic, continental, and pluralist; theoretical, experimental, and applied), and attend to significant intersections between trans identity and class, disability, race, and sexuality. Across language and politics, feminism and phenomenology, decolonial theory and disability studies, trans philosophy concerns itself with trans worldmaking in all its excruciating beauty and mundanity.

At a time when thinly-thought trans-exclusionary views are gaining traction in politics as well as in philosophy, it is critically important that philosophers—especially trans philosophers—redraw the contours of the conversation, highlighting the wisdom already generated in trans communities and the insights still to be gained through philosophical work accountable to those communities. Trans Philosophy: Meaning and Mattering will do just that.

Other Publications

Megan Burke, Grayson Hunt, Tamsin Kimoto, Amy Marvin, Andrea Pitts, and  Perry Zurn, “Transcestry,” QT Magazine, March 2021.
Perry Zurn and Andrea Pitts, eds., “Trans Philosophy: The Early Years,” APA Newsletter on LGBTQ Issues in the Profession 20.1 (2020).
Perry Zurn, “Trans Experience in Philosophy,” American Philosophical Association Diversity Blog. August 11, 2016.