Product Description

Although the term "transgender" itself has achieved familiarity only within the past decade, this authoritative collection of articles demonstrates that the study of behaviors, bodies, and subjective identities which contest common Eurocentric notions of gender has a history stretching back at least to the early 20th century.
Transgender studies is the latest area of academic inquiry to grow out of the exciting nexus of queer theory, feminist studies, and the history of sexuality. Because transpeople challenge our most fundamental assumptions about the relationship between bodies, desire, and identity, the field is both fascinating and contentious. The Transgender Studies Reader puts between two covers fifty influential texts with new introductions by the editors that, taken together, document the evolution of transgender studies in the English-speaking world. By bringing together the voices and experience of transgender individuals, doctors, psychologists, and academically-based theorists, this volume will be a foundational text for the transgender community, transgender studies, and related queer theory.

"Unsung Heroes: Reading Transgender Subjectivities in Hong Kong Action Cinema." Copyright (c) 2004-5 by Helen Hok-Sze Leung. Reprinted from Masculinities and Hong Kong Cinema. Eds. Laikwan Pang and Day Wong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005. 81-98.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #147022 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 758 pages

About the Author
Susan Stryker is the Executive Director of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society, and currently holds a Social Science Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Sexuality Studies in the History Department at Stanford University. Stephen Whittle is Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University and coordinator of the United Kingdom FTM Network.

Customer Reviews

Library, maybe?
It's huge (essential research for papers) but insanely expensive! (I guess if ya can afford SRS, what's a measly hundred bucks, eh. From "Biology = destiny" to "$ = destiny.")

Very cool to have the "canonical" source stuff excerpted in one place but ... well, there's a huge postmodernist stamp all over this volume that minimizes human experience in favor of clever word selection.

Trans is NOT academic anymore than it is psychiatric! The experts have already had their say! In my opinion, this should have featured more autobiographical materials, for balance.

(And, hey, why doesn't anyone look into the intersection of flower-power-"is-that-a-boy-or-girl?" Sixties culture with trans expression during and since then? Is that task up to me? Publishers, are you listening? No, I didn't think so.)

Transgender (Studies) Reader
The book arrived promptly. It was needed for a course reserve so the prompt service and delivery were greatly appreciated.

The Essential Text for Trans Issues and Theories.
The depth and breadth of the articles included in this compendium are astounding to say the least. In one large volume the authors have included samples of writings representing the theoretical to the practical and the lived experience in a time line from the 19th century through the present. The Reader gives a sense of our shared history from a wide variety of view points which affirms all of our lives. As a transgendered person and college student, I recommend the The Transgender Reader to anyone looking for clues to our hidden culture and the world we struggle in everyday.