About this course
Transgender celebrities such as Caitlin Jenner and Laverne Cox fueled mainstream interest in transgender lives and experiences. But trans and queer communities have long fought for trans persons’ rights to be ‘true to self.’ This course explores the history of trans activism with a special focus on Sweden and how legislative and medical discourses change how we think about gender identities and rights. We also explore topics such as transphobia, gender-neutral pronouns, gender passing, transgender children and their families, and how race and class intersect with being trans.
Syllabus
Faculty
Iwo Nord
FacultyIwo Nord is a trans researcher and educator interested in transgender and queer lives and culture, nuances of agency and power, intersections of the transnational and the local, and questions concerning mobility (travel and migration). The past years he has been committed to building and strengthening Transgender Studies in both the Nordic region and in the former Yugoslav space. Devoted to social change for trans people, he is involved in trans academic and activist alliances, resulting in the forthcoming collaborative volume In Transition: Trans Lives, Activisms, and Culture in the Post-Yugoslav Space, edited by Bojan Bilić, Iwo Nord and Aleksa Milanović. He was one of the founding members of Trans Fest Stockholm, an activist collective that strives to create inclusive and empowering cultural and community events in the Swedish capital. Iwo is a PhD candidate in Gender Studies at Södertörn University, and is affiliated with the Center for Baltic and East European Studies. His doctoral project ethnographically explores Belgrade as a transnational destination for gender-affirming surgery. He holds an MA from the University of Oslo, Norway, and has formerly taught at the Institute of Scandinavian and Finnish Studies at the University of Gdansk, Poland. Iwo’s publications include “Routes to Gender-Affirming Surgery: Navigation and Negotiation in Times of Biomedicalization” in Body, Migration, Re/constructive Surgeries: Making the Gendered Body in a Globalized World, edited by Gabriele Griffin and Malin Jordal (Routledge 2018). With DIS Since 2020.