Webinar by Dr. Ava L. J. Kim: "Trans Subterfuge: Toward an Archipelagic History of the Philippines"
Please join the Asian American Studies Program (AAS) for a webinar lecture by Dr. Ava L. J. Kim entitled "Trans Subterfuge: Toward an Archipelagic History of the Philippines."
Lecture Abstract: This talk analyzes the 2014-2016 trial of Joseph Pemberton, a U.S. serviceman who murdered trans Filipina sex worker, Jennifer Laude, at Subic Bay Freeport. In the nationalist fervor surrounding Laude’s death, U.S. and Philippine parties alike aligned Laude’s disclosure as a person “born male,” with a repeated insistence on the Philippines’ “origin” as a U.S. colony. Novelists like Gina Apostol and Jessica Hagedorn, however, reject this connection by positing histories of gender nonconformity against narratives of Philippine transition from colony to nation. These reimagined histories exploit racist expectations of underdevelopment for undercover rebellion and demonstrate that refusals of a sovereign transition offer new, anti-national methods of resistance to violence in the present. Building on the archipelagic turn in American studies, I argue that this trans form of subterfuge offers new ways of conceptualizing the Philippines with other archipelagic regions of the global south.
Lecturer Bio: Ava L.J. Kim is an assistant professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at the University of California, Davis. She previously held the 2022-2023 Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and completed her PhD in English at the University of Pennsylvania as well as her BA in Creative Writing at Macalester College. Her work has been published in GLQ, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, TSQ, American Studies, Radical History Review, and the edited collection, About Face: Stonewall, Revolt, and New Queer Art.
This webinar is free and open to the public.
Please register at: z.umn.edu/AvaKim to receive the webinar link and notifications.
For questions, please email [email protected]