Getting Disciplined: What’s Trans* About Queer Studies Now?

This essay maps the epistemological terrain trans* studies may face as it is widely incorporated into queer studies programs, often housed within women’s studies departments. Over the past two decades, queer studies and women’s studies have rapidly professionalized, producing new modes of disciplinary power that may seek to either include or cite trans* studies, often without fully welcoming its specific material and political investments. Under such conditions, trans* studies may find itself heard largely as a but—an epistemic blockage, a distraction from proper objects, a hindrance to customary methods—that must be disciplined.