Embracing Failure: A Trans Grad Student Kiki on the Trans Art of Failure

Join Denise! Denise! Ph.D. for another trans anti-pro-sem: Embracing Failure! A kiki for trans, non-binary, agender, intersex, and genderfluid graduate students on the liberatory power of the trans art of failure.

After drawing influence from Jack Halberstam's framework of the queer art of failure, we'll identify the features of the academy (e.g., publish or perish, "inclusive excellence," conditional acceptance, objectivity, professionalism) that undermine the developmental, spiritual, and liberatory potentiality stemming from our individual and collective failures. We'll necessarily grapple with the features of academic institutions that define (and even produce) failure in ways that reinforce cissexism and other forms of dominance and undermine intersectional trans power.

Facilitator Bio: Denise! Denise! Ph.D. (they/she) is a proud mixed-Black fat queer non-binary femme with invisible disabilities. Denise is a former tenured liberal arts sociology & gender + sexuality studies professor, having co-authored anthologies and recently . They founded Sociologists for Trans Justice in 2016, which they co-led until 2018. It took a suicide attempt in 2021 to finally leave a deeply cissexist, white supremacist liberal arts college in Richmond, Virginia.

She is now a full-time soloproneur as an academic justice consultant and anti-racist trans liberation consultant. http://thehouseofdenise.com

Host or Publisher The House of Denise