This lecture develops transtopia as an unruly concept that emboldens a continuum model of transness, thereby activating a mode of historical inquiry that dismantles both the transphobic order of the past and the transgender presumption of the present. That is, it challenges both the assumption that gender nonconforming figures did not exist historically and the idea that the Western category of transgender delivers the best framework for understanding their experience. To unveil and remedy some of the most salient flaws of epistemic convention in historical inquiry, historical exemplars from the Sinophone Pacific will be analyzed and weighted in decolonial terms.

Howard Chiang holds the Lai Ho & Wu Cho-liu Endowed Chair in Taiwan Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is Professor of East Asian Languages & Cultural Studies, Director of the Center for Taiwan Studies, and an affiliated faculty of History and Feminist Studies. He is the author of two award-winning monographs: After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China (Columbia, 2018) and Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific (2021). Between 2019 and 2022, he served as the Founding Chair of the Society of Sinophone Studies.

This event presented by the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible in part by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.