COMPLETION SEMINAR: TRANS CINEMA, TRANS VIEWERS

As part of the completion process for a PhD, I'm required to give a presentation outlining the findings of my project. If you'd like to come and see what I've produced in the last five and a half years (gah!), please feel free to come along.

Date: Friday 5th August
Time: 4pm-5pm.
Venue: Parkville campus of the University of Melbourne, John Medley Building, West Tower, Room 106. Map.

Abstract: Trans cinema, trans viewers

The majority of scholarship on trans cinema comprises textual analysis of films representing trans (e.g. transgender, transsexual) people. In contrast, my thesis argues that trans viewers’ reception and circulation of films is of primary importance. To this end, I conducted twelve in-depth interviews to ascertain how trans people might use films and filmgoing for individual and collective purposes. This presentation gives an overview of my findings.

I outline the gaps in the existing literature on trans cinema and the ethical and methodological considerations of my own research, and give key examples from each of my major chapters. I discuss participants’ engagements with the question ‘What is trans cinema?’; I illustrate participants’ use of the film Transamerica as a locus both for critiques of cisnormative psychiatric and filmmaking practices and for their (re)negotiations of individual and collective trans identity; I investigate the impact of trans film violence, and its attendant feelings of fear and risk, on trans viewing subjectivity; and I finally explore the ways in which Melbourne trans networks materialise through the circulation and screening of trans films.