Talk by  Prof. Cáel M. Keegan (Assistant Professor at GVSU)

How do we decide what belongs in the transgender historical archive? What is a “trans” text, and who gets to say? This talk places the Wachowskis’ The Matrix (1999) next to Boys Don’t Cry (1999) to explore how new critical methods might help us expand our notions of transgender cultural production. Nearly 20 years after these films’ simultaneous release, debates over what should be recognized as “transgender” continue to be overdetermined by emphases on identification and representation. Revisiting The Matrix as Boys Don’t Cry’s aesthetic and historical “mirror” helps us to recover unrecognized expressions of trans phenomenology and politics.

Cáel M. Keegan is Assistant Professor at GVSU where he teaches courses on queer, transgender, and feminist theories, popular and visual cultures, American studies, and LGBTQ cultures/identities/histories. His book Lana and Lilly Wachowski: Sensing Transgender is forthcoming from  University of Illinois Press.

Brought to you by the Program in American Studies. Cosponsored by LGBTQ Studies, Media  & Cinema Studies, Women's & Gender Studies & the Women’s Center.