Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lectureship Program 

Thursday, November 13, 2025

4:30pm, Gaines Theatre

REGISTER HERE: 

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Description: History is a story we tell in the present that links what we know of the past to a future we envision. In this talk, drawn from her forthcoming book of the same title, gender theorist and historian Susan Stryker examines the trans-temporal dimensions of what gets labelled “transgender” today, but which can be thought of as a more general capacity for life to exceed whatever current configurations it might have. At stake, Stryker contends, in vexing contemporary conflicts over pronouns and public toilets, is a deeper ontological struggle over which fantasies of past and futurity have the ability to ground themselves in materiality and come to count as real.

Speaker Bio: Dr. Susan Stryker holds a distinguished visiting appointment at Stanford's Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, and is Professor Emerita of Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies at the University of Arizona, where she directed the Institute for LGBT Studies for many years. She is also former Executive Director of the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco. Dr. Stryker earned her Ph.D. in United States History at UC Berkeley in 1992. She is the author or editor of numerous articles, books and anthologies, including Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution. A collection of previously published short works, When Monsters Speak: A Susan Stryker Reader, was published by Duke University Press in 2024. Her new book, Changing Gender, on the intellectual history of the gender concept, is due out in 2026. 

Co-sponsored by the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, the Department of History, and the Reiff Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution.

Honors Program Event 

For more information, contact Dr. Laura Puaca at laura.puaca@cnu.edu