Infrastructures of Trans Representation

A Roundtable Discussion with Emmett Harsin Drager, Coco Klockner, and Jeanne Vaccaro

Location: Swallow 101

Time: April 3, 4-5:30 PM

Debates around transness and trans rights often focus on bodily autonomy and individual freedom. But the individual body is only the most visible manifestation of the infrastructures of trans life. From the gender clinic to the art gallery, from the courtroom to the bathroom, from the front page to the archive, what we can or cannot see as “trans” is structured by an array of material and immaterial conditions. Bringing together perspectives from art practice, art history, gender and sexuality studies, and the history of trans therapeutics, this roundtable discussion aims to illuminate some of these complex infrastructures. The conversation will focus especially on representations of trans life in art and culture, asking how these representations are at once products of and responses to the infrastructures that undergird them. 

Readings are available in advance of the roundtable. If interested, or for further information, please contact thomaslove@missouri.edu.

Speaker Bios:

Emmett Harsin Drager is a trans studies scholar and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Missouri focusing on the history of trans therapeutics in the United States. 

Coco Klockner is an artist and writer based in New York. She is the author of K-Y (Genderfail Press, 2019) and her essays have appeared in Texte Zur Kunst, Spike Art Magazine, *Real Life, and Disclaimer/Liquid Architecture. Recent solo exhibitions of her sculpture, installation, and sound have been held at Bad Water, Tennessee (2023); Silke Lindner, New York (2022); and The Anderson, Richmond, Virginia (2019). 

Jeanne Vaccaro is Assistant Professor of Transgender and Museum Studies at the University of Kansas. She is also a curator and co-founder of the NYC Trans Oral History Project.