New and Decolonial Approaches to Gender Nonconformity

New and Decolonial Approaches to Gender Nonconformity explores gender nonconformity across time, metropole, and periphery while confronting the hostilities of institutional ‘homes’ and lived experiences as teachers and scholars. Amidst this turmoil of new conflicts and painful histories, this collection offers an anticolonial refuge in the former heart of empire. * Xine Yao, University College London, UK *
A vital collection of essays that speak to the political conditions in the now, illuminating how the colonial disciplinary logics at the heart of the neoliberal university in the global North reinforce what Sylvia Wynter diagnosed as the construction of white men as ‘the human’. The conversations in the book deftly analyse how treating race and gender as exclusive to each other does harm to gender-nonconforming and Black and Global Majority people. * Swati Arora, Queen Mary University of London, UK *
Both a balm and a call to action, this book responds to the urgency of our times with a grounded, multi-faceted look at the long, global history of gender non-conformity. Its chapters are diverse and often unexpected, bringing together a kaleidoscope of approaches and forms from embodied art-making to autobiography to theory to historical narrative. The ultimate effect is powerful. We visit multiple sites – online fan fiction imagining Les Misérables as trans, a gender identity clinic consulting room in which the author stages a refusal, a lockdown-era Zoom performance in which the audience is invited to move and interrupt. In all of them, the entanglement of race and gender is paramount, as is the problem of how to live in contexts that stigmatise, weaponise, and discipline gender diversity. In its deep care and variety, it’s a kind of rejoinder to the search for easy answers or viral ‘takes’. I look forward to learning and teaching with this important volume. * Mo Moulton, University of Birmingham, UK *
This vibrant, urgent and incisive volume takes aim at the neoliberal university, denouncing the role of the academy in mainstreaming transphobia. Demonstrating the imbrication of cisnormativity and colonial thought both within and outside higher education, yet boldly setting a course towards a livable academia, the collection showcases gender non-conforming and decolonial brilliance. * Blake Gutt, University of Utah, USA *
Refreshing insights into the hot topics of sex, gender, and decolonisation pepper this fantastic collection. Amidst the ongoing objectification and criminalisation of gender non-conforming people's lives, Kit Heyam and Jonathan Ward have assembled a hopeful account of collective histories and possible futures. The ideas interrogated here will by turn inspire deep nuance and hit you directly in the gut. Recommended for scholars, activists, artists, and historians everywhere. * Ruth Pearce, author of Understanding Trans Health *
This excellent collection on gender nonconformity in its relation to multiple constructions of ‘home’ brings together a plurality of analyses in pedagogy, activism and history. It opens up exciting new avenues for common threads in gender and sexuality theorisation and decolonial approaches. * Sandeep Bakshi, Associate Professor of Queer and Decolonial Studies, Université Paris Cité, France *