Cáel M. Keegan
| Cáel M. Keegan PhD | |
|---|---|
| Born | |
| 🏡 Residence | Grand Rapids, Michigan |
| 🏳️ Nationality | American |
| 🏫 Education | St. Bonaventure University, University at Buffalo |
| 💼 Occupation | |
| 👔 Employer | Grand Valley State University |
Cáel M. Keegan is an American transgender studies scholar working at the intersections of popular culture, film studies, women's and gender studies, and critical race studies.[1] He is one of the leading scholars of trans* cinema studies and is regularly interviewed by the national press about contemporary transgender media. He is one of the leaders of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies' Queer Caucus and a former leader of the National Women's Studies Association's Trans/Gender Variant Caucus.[2]
Early Life and Education[edit]
Keegan grew up in rural Pennsylvania. He earned a BA in English with a Minor in Women's Studies at St. Bonaventure University in western New York. He continued his education at University at Buffalo, where he earned an MA and PhD in American studies. Keegan was hired as an assistant professor in the liberal studies and the women's, gender, and sexuality studies departments at Grand Valley State University in 2014.[3][4]
Scholarship[edit]
According to trans cinema scholar Akkadia Ford, Keegan is one of the key figures in "contemporary trans cinema scholarship."[1] He was recently interviewed in the episode of the Vice Guide to Film titled "New Trans Cinema."
In 2016, Keegan spoke on Michigan Public Radio about contemporary misunderstandings of trans identity. He said:
"A lot of those misconceptions [about transgender people] that are really coming to the surface now in the public discourse are really old stereotypes that used to be attached to homosexuality. And they’re still lingering around in the media and they’re still lingering around in our politics and they just happen to be now attached to trans people.”[4]
He noted in an interview with Vice Media that broadcast TV writers of shows like The Fosters (2013 TV series) still feel like they need to help cisgender viewers learn how to "navigate" trans characters.[5]
At Grand Valley State's 2017 commemoration of Transgender Day of Remembrance, Keegan stated: “Transgender Day of Remembrance is a time during which we traditionally mark the premature loss of transgender lives due to violence. [...] In this context, a remembrance is a time we set aside to consider what has gone missing and what our world might be like without such empty spaces.”[3]
Keegan's book on the Wachowskis will be published by University of Illinois Press in October 2018. In this book, Keegan shows how "the Wachowskis’ work has—from its earliest iterations in Bound and The Matrix—established an unfolding, mutually constitutive relationship between transgender consciousness and 21st century cinematic reality."[6]
Activism[edit]
As a trans man and transgender studies scholar, Keegan has regularly spoken up for trans inclusion in feminist scholarship and activism. In January 2017, when he was national co-chair of the Trans/Gender Variant Caucus at the National Women's Studies Association, he responded to a series of anti-trans comments on an American women's studies listserv (WMST-L) with a statement outlining the harms of these comments and called for a boycott of the list.[2]
Keegan has also criticized the pink pussyhats popularized at the 2017 Women's March. He stated: “We know that any time feminism starts centering people based on anatomy, that gets kind of dangerous for trans people."[7] This focus on anatomy detracts from the common fights of transgender people and cisgender women for bodily autonomy. Keegan noted: "If people were really paying attention to reproductive rights they would know that in many, many states in the U.S., transgender people are required to become sterilized to change our [legal] genders."
Selected Publications[edit]
- Lana and Lilly Wachowski: Sensing Transgender. University of Illinois Press, Contemporary Film Directors Series (in press for publication, October 2018).
- Somatechnics. Special Issue: “Cinematic Bodies.” Co-edited with L. Horak and E. Steinbock. Vol. 8.1 (March 2018).
- “History, Disrupted: The Aesthetic Gentrification of Queer and Trans Cinema After the Recession.” Social Alternatives 35.3 (Spring 2017): 50-6.[8]
- “Nothing to Hide: Selfies, Sex, and the Visibility Dilemma in Trans Male Online Cultures.” Co-authored with T. Raun. In Sex in the Digital Age. Eds. Paul G. Nixon and Isabel K. Dusterhoft (New York: Routledge, 2017), 89-100.
- “Revisitation: A Trans Phenomenology of the Media Image.” MedieKultur 61.1-5 (Fall 2016): 26-41.
- “On Being the Object of Compromise.” Transgender Studies Quarterly 3.1-2 (Spring 2016): 150-7.
- “Tongues Without Bodies: The Wachowskis’ Sense8.” Transgender Studies Quarterly 3.3-4 (Fall 2016). 605-10.
- “Emptying the Future: Queer Melodramatics and Negative Utopia on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture 1.1. (Jan. 2016): 9-22.
- “Moving Bodies: Sympathetic Migrations in Transgender Narrativity," Genders 55 (Spring 2013).[9]
References[edit]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Akkadia, Ford (2016). "Transliteracy and the Trans New Wave: independent trans cinema representation, classification, exhibition". ePublications@SCU: 11.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Jaschik, Scott (January 30, 2017). "Rift in Women's Studies Over Transgender Issues". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved June 5, 2018.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Konell, Ty (November 15, 2017). "GVSU observes Transgender Day of Remembrance". Grand Valley Lanthorn. Retrieved June 4, 2018.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Hakala, Josh (May 4, 2016). "Breaking ground: being young and transgender in Michigan". Michigan Radio. Retrieved June 4, 2018.
- ↑ Betancourt, Manuel (July 7, 2017). "TV Is Teaching America How to Treat Trans Kids". Vice. Retrieved June 5, 2018.
- ↑ "Sensing Transgender: Ecstatic Passages through Cinematic Reality". Stanford Humanities Center. Retrieved June 8, 2018.
- ↑ Compton, Julie (February 7, 2017). "Pink 'Pussyhat' Creator Addresses Criticism Over Name". NBC News. Retrieved June 4, 2018.
- ↑ Laker, Jason (2016). "The Present State and Future Directions of Genders and Sexualities: Demilitarising the binary beachhead" (PDF). Social Alternatives. 35 (3): 4.
- ↑ Sasala, An (2018). "Panic! Humanity's Cis-Heteronormative Fear of the Transgender Android". Somatechnics. 8 (1): 64–78. doi:10.3366/soma.2018.0237. ISSN 2044-0138.
External links[edit]
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