Posted: november 9th, 2011 | Author: Tobias | Filed under: Ikke kategoriseret | No Comments »
After a very inspiring stay in Berkeley/San Francisco I am back in Denmark. I have been spending the last 4 months editing a special issue of KKF about Trans*. Transgender Studies is unfortunately still a very limited field of study in a Scandinavian context – especially in Denmark but hopefully this issue will spark some interest and encourage academics to do (further) research within the field. It will come out in December and I can highly recommend it to all you Scandinavian speaking/reading people. Besides from the introduction I am contributing with an article with the title ‘Man enough? Embodiment and narratives of masculinity in trans video blogs on YouTube’ (translation from the Danish title). I want to thank Amos Mac for letting us use his photographs – they make this issue a visual pleasure!
You can have a peep at the front cover here: Trans* 
While me and the two other editors were working on this special issue we got more and more enthusiastic about the idea that we should try to arrange a seminar Denmark, connecting people working within Transgender Studies in Scandinavia. It is with great pleasure and excitement that I can announce the realization of two seminars – one focused on Transgender Studies as a theoretical and academic discipline – and the other focused on the intersection between critical thinking, policy and activism. It is also a great pleasure to announce that Susan Stryker will be the keynote speaker.
Here is the flyer trans-seminar 
Here is a full program:
Seminar 1: Scandinavian Trans Studies
When: Friday December 9, 2011. 12:00-18:00
Venue: University of Copenhagen, Njalsgade 120, buiding 23, room 23.0.49.
12:00-13:45 – Transgender Studies 2.0: New Directions in the Field. Susan Stryker, Indiana University, USA.
14:00-14:30 – Irrevocable (Trans)Formations? Religion, Medicine and Academia Intersecting.
Sabine Meyer, Humboldt Universität Berlin, Germany.
14:30-15:00 – Queer and Trans: Revolutionary Rhetoric and Social Change.
Jan Wickman, Åbo Akademi, Finland.
15:15-15:45 – Man Enough? Male Embodiment and Narratives of Masculinity in Trans Video Blogs on YouTube.
Tobias Raun, Roskilde Universitet, Denmark.
16:00-17:00 – Panel discussion between the four lecturers.
17:00-18:00 – Reception.
Seminar 2: Trans Politics and Human Rights
Saturday December 10, 2011. 12:00-15:00.
The Danish Institute for Human Rights, Strandgade 56, 1401 København K.
At this seminar leading activists and academics present a short presentation on their thoughts on trans politics leading to a conversation on the possibilities and limits of trans politics.
Invited speakers:
* Vibe Grevsen, LGBT Danmark
* Carla LaGata, TGEU and Transrespect versus Transphobia Worldwide
* Susan Stryker, Indiana University, USA.
Posted: oktober 18th, 2010 | Author: Tobias | Filed under: Ikke kategoriseret | No Comments »
I am busy teaching the course:
”Makeover Takeover: Bodily Transformations in Contemporary Media Culture”
Here is a short description of the course and a reading list:
The course focuses on what has been coined as “makeover culture” (Jones 2008), highlighting the contemporary preoccupation with bodily transformations. This fascination appears in many forms and across different visual formats and it manifests itself in the rise in cosmetic surgery worldwide. Cultural theorists has characterised this as a ”makeover takeover ” (Lewis 2008) or a culture obsessed with “quick-changes” (Sobchack 2000). The potentiality of the body to morph, shift, change and become fluid is a powerful cultural fantasy in the early twenty-first century as Judith Halberstam points out (Halberstam 2005). As Dana Heller notes: ‘Suddenly, or so it seemed, everything and everyone was in need of a makeover, or at least the experience of watching one performed on television’ (Heller 2007, 1).
The course introduces to theoretical and analytical discussions within the field of makeover culture using visual material as a starting point. We will be looking at different notions of the beautiful body and how gender, sexuality, race and class are inscribed in these.
1) Makeover takeover.
This first session introduces to various aspects of the makeover takeover of broadcasting and how to conceptualise our contemporary preoccupation with bodily transformations.
Readings:
* Brenda Weber: “Into the Makeover Maze. A method in the Madness” pp. 1-35 in Makeover TV. Selfhood, Citizenship, and Celebrity, Duke University Press, Durham and London 2009.
* Meredith Jones: Before/After: From Heresy to Makeover Culture”, pp. 7-29 in Skintight. An Anatomy of Cosmetic Surgery, Berg Oxford and New York 2008.
* Dana Heller: “Introduction. Reading the Makeover”, pp. 1-5 in Heller, Dana (ed.), Makeover television. Realities Remodelled, I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd, London & New York, 2007.
2) Making the body beautiful and correcting the “wrong” body.
This session introduces to the cultural history of aesthetic surgery. We will be exploring different ideas about beauty and “passing” and how these are connected to categories like e.g. race and gender.
Readings:
* Gilman, Sander (1999): “Judging by Appearances”, pp. 3-42 in Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery. Princeton: Princeton university Press.
* Kathy Davis: “Surgical Passing: Or Why Michael Jackson’s Nose Makes `us’ Uneasy”, pp. 73-92 in Feminist Theory 2003; 4; 73.
3) Makeover TV: creating the perfect man and woman.
We will be discussing how programs like e.g. USA’s Extreme Makeover and UK’s 10 Years Younger represent and produce masculinity and femininity and how these are connected to other categories like sexuality, race, class and disability. The theoretical point of departure will be in Foucauldian and feminist readings.
Readings:
* Kathryn Pauly Morgan: “Women and the Knife: Cosmetic Surgery and the Colonization of Women’s Bodies”, pp. 49-77 in Cressida J. Heyes and Meredith Jones, ed. Cosmetic Surgery: A Feminist Primer (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate 2009).
* Heyes, Cressida: “Cosmetic Surgery and the Televisual Makeover: A Foucauldian Feminist Reading.” Feminist Media Studies, 2007, 7(1), 17–32.
* Holliday, Ruth, and Cairnie, Allie (2007): “Man Made Plastic: Investigating Men’s Consumption of Aesthetic Surgery”, pp. 57– 78 Journal of Consumer Culture, 7(1).
Further readings (optional):
* Brenda Weber: “”I’m a Woman Now!” Race, Class, and Femme-ing the Normative”, pp. 127-170 in Makeover TV. Selfhood, Citizenship, and Celebrity, Duke University Press, Durham and London 2009.
* Brenda Weber: “What Makes the Man? Masculinity and the Self-Made (Over) Man”, pp. 171-213 in Makeover TV. Selfhood, Citizenship, and Celebrity, Duke University Press, Durham and London 2009.
4) “Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us”.
The title “Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us” taken from a book written by Kate Bornstein, seems suitable for this session’s introduction to queer theoretical and trans theoretical perspectives on bodily transformations. We will continue the investigation of our notions of male and female, the myths attached to them, and the penalties that befall not only those who transgress the definitions but anyone who conforms to them.
Readings:
* Judith Butler: “Introduction” pp. 1-23 in Bodies that Matter. On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”, Routledge, New York and London, 1993.
* Judith Butler: ”Introduction”, pp. 1-16 in Undoing Gender, Routledge 2004.
5) Screen-births or online transformations: minority groups taking charge of their own representation.
This session focuses on my own main scope of research, namely the numerous amounts of video blogs (vlogs) on YouTube where transsexuals (using hormones and/or surgery to alter their body) document and discuss their gender transition. We will be discussing the “transness” of these trans vlogs in continuation of our previous discussions about gender and media representation.
Readings:
* Susan Stryker: “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage”, pp. 244-255 in Stryker, Susan & Whittle, Stephen (ed.): The Transgender Studies Reader, Routledge New York, 2006.
* Jay Prosser: “A Skin of One’s Own: Towards a Theory of Transsexual Embodiment”, pp. 61-96 in Second skins: the body narratives of transsexuality, New York, N.Y. : Columbia University Press, 1998.
* Kate O’Riodan: “Transgender activism and the net: global activism or casualty of globalisation”, pp. 179-193 in Jong, Wilma de, Shaw, Martin & Stammers, Neil (ed.): Global Activism, Global Media, Pluto Press London, 2005.
