The first UK Workshop in Trans Philosophy will take place over two days on 5th and 6th May 2022. Whilst nominally based at the University of Glasgow, the workshop will take place online. You can find the programme below, along with accessibility information.
We are generously supported by the Scots Philosophical Association and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow.
Keynote Speakers:
- Matthew J. Cull, University of Leeds,
- Ruth Pearce, University of Glasgow.
Convenors:
- Katharine Jenkins, University of Glasgow,
- Alexis Davin, University of Bristol.
Trans philosophy – philosophy that speaks to the experiences of, politics, and cultural production of transgender people – is one of the fastest-growing fields in contemporary philosophy. In addition to hallmark papers such as Kapusta (2016), Bettcher (2013, 2019), and Dembroff & Wodak (2018), last year saw the publication of the ground-breaking volume of trans political theory and philosophy Transgender Marxism (Gleeson and O’Rourke 2020). Beyond the realm of published work, a new generation of PhD and early career trans philosophers is beginning to produce exciting new thought.
This rapid growth has come against a difficult political background, especially in the UK. Transgender people have become the political football du jour in the UK, facing what Meg John Barker (2017) has called a “moral panic” that has only intensified in the past three years. Moreover, trans people face ongoing legal and political challenges to their rights, to say nothing of spiking rates of hate crimes and the high rates of poverty and homelessness among trans people.
In this workshop we seek to bring together new and established scholars to develop the trans philosophy community in the United Kingdom, break new philosophical ground, and help set the agenda for transgender philosophy going forward.
Programme
| UK time | Thursday 5 May | |
| 9:30 – 9.45 | Welcome and Introduction | Organisers |
| 9.45 – 10.25 | Transphobia as Aesthetic Misrecognition | Anna Hartigan |
| 10.30 – 11.10 | Histories of Transgender Thought: Edward Carpenter, the Double Mind, and Ambidexterity | Felix Antelme |
| 11.10 – 11.30 | Break | |
| 11.30 – 12.10 | Ideological Scientism and Transphobic Social Movements | Rory Kent |
| 12.15 – 12.55 | What is Trans Reproduction? | Alexis Davin |
| 12.55 – 13.35 | Lunch | |
| 13.35 – 14.15 | An Attitude Chosen in Situation: Beauvoirian Lesbianism and Authentic Transness | Elizabete Mežinska |
| 14.20 – 15.00 | Gender Euphoria | Harry Ainscough & Riley Lewicki |
| 15.00 – 15:20 | Break | |
| 15:20 – 16:30 | Keynote: Let’s (not!) fight a TERF war: Trans feminism in a time of moral panic | Ruth Pearce |
| Friday 6 May | ||
| 9.45 – 10.25 | Transgender Nominalism: Classifying Sex and the Problem of the Base Kind | Alexander Giesen |
| 10.30 – 11.10 | Towards a New Concept of Sex | Lara Schadde |
| 11.10 – 11.30 | Break | |
| 11.30 – 12.10 | Are Deadnames Empty? | Anna Klieber and Emma Bolton |
| 12.15 – 12.55 | Tackling Hermeneutical Injustices in Transition-Related Healthcare | Nicholas Clanchy |
| 12.55 – 13.35 | Lunch | |
| 13.35 – 14.15 | Trans-Inclusive Feminism & the Very Idea of Exclusionary Concepts | Nikki Ernst |
| 14.20 – 15.00 | Caring for Gender Transition | Jules Wong |
| 15.00 – 15:20 | Break | |
| 15:20 – 16:30 | Keynote: Un Oeuf, but Enough: Trans Epistemology | Matthew Cull |
Registration and accessibility
Registration for the workshop is now closed. This conference will be held on Zoom. All registered attendees have been sent an email with details about attending the workshop.
We aim to make the workshop as accessible as a possible. We will be providing real-time captioning for talks during the workshop, and will work to address any other access needs you may have. Please let us know what requirements you have using the form, or contact us at uktransphilosophy@gmail.com if you’d like to discuss these further. Grants are available to help enable those with caring responsibilities to attend, please email if this applies to you.
Notice of postponement
The UK Workshop in Trans Philosophy was postponed from its original dates of 24th and 25th of March. This is due to strike action taking place at the University of Glasgow on the dates we initially planned. We do not wish to put anyone in a position of having to cross a picket line, even a digital one.
Perhaps more importantly, the strike action is (in part) over precarity and workplace conditions: something that trans philosophers have a huge stake in improving, and it would hardly be in line with the aims of the conference (one of which was to help to build the trans philosophy community in the UK) were we to undermine strike action aimed at improving working conditions for academics. If you’d like to know more about these strikes, please visit the UCU website here: https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/11896/Why-were-taking-action
UK Workshop in Trans Philosophy 2022 