Susan Stryker

Susan Stryker
Occupation Professor, author, filmmaker
Language English
Nationality United States
Citizenship United States
Education Ph.D., United States History
B.A., Letters
Alma mater University of California, Berkeley
University of Oklahoma
Subject Gender studies
LGBT culture
LGBT rights in the United States
Women's studies
Notable works The Transgender Studies Reader (2006)
Notable awards

Lambda Literary Award[1]

San Francisco / Northern California Emmy Award[2]
Website
gws.arizona.edu/user/161

Susan O'Neal Stryker is an American professor, author, filmmaker, and theorist whose work focuses on gender and human sexuality. She is currently an associate professor of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Arizona, and is the director of the university's Institute for LGBT Studies.[3][4] She has served as a visiting professor at Harvard University, University of California, Santa Cruz, and Simon Fraser University.[5] Stryker is an openly lesbian trans woman who has written extensively about transgenderism and queer culture.[6]

Stryker received a bachelor's degree in Letters from University of Oklahoma in 1983. She earned a Ph.D. in United States History at the University of California, Berkeley in 1992;[7] the doctoral thesis she presented was Making Mormonism: A Critical and Historical Analysis of Cultural Formation.[8] She began to transition from man to woman shortly after earning her doctorate.[9] In 1994, her essay "My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix" became the first article to be published in a peer-reviewed academic journal by an openly transgender author.[10]

Stryker was later awarded a postdoctoral research fellowship in human sexuality studies at Stanford University, sponsored by the Social Science Research Council and the Ford Foundation.[5] From 1999 to 2003, she was the executive director of the GLBT Historical Society.

In 2007, the Monette-Horowitz Trust honored her for her anti-homophobia activism.[11][12] KQED (TV), San Francisco's Public Broadcasting Service, honored her with a "Local Hero Award"; she also received a Community Vanguard Award from the Transgender Law Center.[11]

Publications

Books

Stryker's first book, Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area (Chronicle Books 1996), coauthored with Jim Van Buskirk,[13] is an illustrated account of the evolution of LGBT culture in the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. This book and its successor, Queer Pulp, were each nominated for a Lambda Literary Award.[14]

For her second, a critical survey titled Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback (Chronicle Books 2001),[15] Stryker turned her attention to the lesbian pulp fiction and gay male pulp fiction published in the United States from the 1930s through the 1960s.

With Stephen Whittle she co-edited The Transgender Studies Reader (Routledge 2006),[16] which was her first work to win a Lambda Literary Award. Her following book, Transgender History (Seal Press 2008),[17] covers transvestism, transgender people, and transsexualism in the United States from the conclusion of World War II to the 2000s.[18][19][20][21]

Stryker is now working on a new book project, Cross-Dressing for Empire: Gender and Performance at the Bohemian Grove. The Bohemian Grove is a campground in Northern California, and the summer meeting-place of the Bohemian Club, a private organization of American men with considerable political and economic power or cultural influence.[22][23][24]

Film and video

Stryker received a San Francisco / Northern California Emmy Award for her directorial work on Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria (2005),[25] a documentary film about the Gene Compton's Cafeteria riot of 1966; the film was co-written, -directed, and -produced by Victor Silverman. With director Michelle Lawler and executive producer Kim Klausner she subsequently co-produced Forever's Gonna Start Tonight (2009), a documentary film about Vicki Marlane, an HIV-positive, transgender performer at nightclubs and lounges. Stryker's most recent documentary is Christine in the Cutting Room (2013), an experimental film about Christine Jorgensen.[26]

Monika Treut filmed and interviewed Stryker for the 1999 documentary film Gendernauts: A Journey Through Shifting Identities. She was also interviewed for a 2002 episode of the long-running television documentary series SexTV, and for two episodes of Sex: The Revolution (2008).

Articles, essays, and scholarly papers

Stryker and Paisley Currah co-edit Transgender Studies Quarterly, the first non-medical academic journal devoted to transgender issues.[27] The journal premiered in 2014.

Stryker's scholarly papers have been published in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies,[28] WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly,[29] parallax, Radical History Review, and other academic journals. In 2008, she was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for her Salon.com article "Why the T in LGBT is Here to Stay",[30] a response to John Aravosis' 2007 article "How did the T get in LGBT?".[31]

In Transgender Studies: Queer Theory’s Evil Twin (2004), Stryker explains that the trans communities are often marginalized within the queer community. Queer Studies privileges specific narratives of sexual orientation over gender identity. She uses her own experiences as a transsexual to illustrate her feelings of marginalization within the queer community. [32]

See also

Notes

  1. "Northwest News: Cal Anderson Memorial Lecture at the Evergreen State College". Seattle Gay News (Volume 37 Issue 06). Retrieved 3 September 2012.
  2. Szymanski, Zak (September 14, 2006). "Friends set up defense fund for author". Bay Area Reporter. Retrieved 3 September 2012.
  3. "Susan Stryker, Ph.D.". Department of Gender & Women's Studies. University of Arizona College of Social & Behavioral Sciences. Retrieved 4 May 2012.
  4. Bolinger, Joyce (8 June 2011). "Susan Stryker takes Ariz. post". Windy City Times (Windy City Media Group). Retrieved 7 May 2012.
  5. 5.0 5.1 "Susan Stryker". The Center for Sex and Gender Research. California State University, Northridge. Retrieved 6 May 2012.
  6. ""My Words to Victor Frankenstein..." by Susan Stryker". Retrieved 2013-12-05.
  7. Rudacille, Deborah (2006). "Conversation with Susan Stryker, Ph.D.". The Riddle of Gender. New York: Anchor Books. pp. 52–61. ISBN 978-0-385-72197-4.
  8. Stryker, Susan O'Neal. Making Mormonism: A Critical and Historical Analysis of Cultural Formation (Thesis). University of California, Berkeley. OCLC 32257293.
  9. Silverman, Victor (director, writer); Stryker, Susan (director, writer, presenter) (2005). Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria (DVD). San Francisco, California: Frameline Distribution. 3 minutes in. OCLC 68045197. I had recently finished my Ph.D. in History, come out as transsexual, and started my transition from man to womanall in the same year.
  10. Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women. New York [u.a.]: Routledge. 2000. p. 440. ISBN 978-0-415-92088-9.
  11. 11.0 11.1 Cassell, Heather (1 March 2007). "Vote is on for SF Pride marshals". Bay Area Reporter. Retrieved 3 September 2012.
  12. "2008 Awards". Monette-Horowitz Trust. Retrieved 4 September 2012.
  13. Stryker, Susan; Van Buskirk, Jim (1996). Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. ISBN 9780811811873. OCLC 33079347.
  14. Sullivan, Nikki; Murray, Samantha, eds. (2009). Somatechnics: Queering the Technologisation of Bodies. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. p. viii. ISBN 978-0-7546-7530-3. OCLC 319247423. Retrieved 5 September 2012.
  15. Stryker, Susan (2001). Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. ISBN 9780811830201. OCLC 45620803.
  16. Stryker, Susan; Whittle, Stephen (2006). The Transgender Studies Reader. New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415947084. OCLC 62782200.
  17. Stryker, Susan (2008). Transgender History. Berkeley: Seal Press. ISBN 9781580052245. OCLC 183914566.
  18. Roth, Benita (2010). "Book Reviews: Transgender History". Signs (University of Chicago Press) (Spring): 7625. Retrieved 4 September 2012.
  19. Kornstein, Harris (2008). "Trans Activism". Left Turn (October/November). Retrieved 4 September 2012.
  20. Tebbutt, Clare. "Book Review: Transgender History". Women's History Review (Taylor & Francis). doi:10.1080/09612025.2011.643006.
  21. Kelly, Reese C. (2009). "Moving Across and Beyond Boundaries". GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (Duke University Press) 15 (4): 6468. doi:10.1215/10642684-2009-007. Retrieved 11 May 2012.
  22. Kay, Jane (July 6, 2009). "No retreat from uproar over Bohemian Club woods". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 14 July 2009.
  23. Bohemian Club. Constitution, By-laws, and Rules, Officers, Committees, and Members, Bohemian Club, 1904, p. 11. Semi-centennial high jinks in the Grove, 1922, Bohemian Club, 1922, pp. 11–22.
  24. Parry, 2005, pp. 218–219.
  25. "Pomona College Professor Wins Northern California Emmy Award; Documentary Screaming Queens to Air Nationally on PBS in June". AScribe Law News Service. 24 May 2006. Retrieved 4 May 2012.
  26. "Christine in the Cutting Room (work in progress)". Frameline. Retrieved 4 September 2012.
  27. http://www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2014/05/27/duke-univ-press-debuts-academic-journal-transgender-studies
  28. Stryker, Susan (1998). "The Transgender Issue: An Introduction". GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (Duke University Press) 4 (2): 14558. doi:10.1215/10642684-4-2-145. Retrieved 11 May 2012.
  29. Stryker, Susan; Currah, Paisley; Moore, Lisa Jean (2008). "Introduction: Trans-, Trans, or Transgender?". WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly (The Feminist Press) 36 (34): 1122. doi:10.1353/wsq.0.0112. Retrieved 11 May 2012.
  30. Stryker, Susan (11 October 2007). "Why the T in LGBT is Here to Stay". Salon. Salon Media Group. Retrieved 6 May 2012.
  31. Aravosis, John (8 October 2007). "How did the T get in LGBT?". Salon. Salon Media Group. Retrieved 6 May 2012.
  32. Stryker, Susan (2004). "Transgender Studies: Queer Theory's Evil Twin".

External links