Honors Faculty Lecture Series

On Friday September 24, Dr. Richard Nunan will give a talk about "Identity Politics and Transgendered Ambivalence at the Movies" as part of the Honors College faculty lecture series.

Do feature films that portray transgendered characters take such characters seriously, or are they still dismissive of trans identity, perhaps more subtly today than three or four decades ago? Some contemporary examples—The Crying Game (1992),  Ma Vie En Rose (1997), Boys Don’t Cry (1999) Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), Soldier’s Girl (2003), and Transamerica (2005)—provoke both negative and positive trans-sensitive critiques of such portrayals.  But depending on the film, they tend to be more  negative than positive.  While the critiques are often right on target, they sometimes overlook ways in which some films in this genre can be quite subversive of traditional gender binary culture, in ways which promote greater sensitivity to transgendered lives, despite the criticism.  We will examine a few of these cases.

The time is 3 pm in Hawkins LLC (just inside Rivers Residence Hall)

Please contact Jill Conway at conwayj@cofc.edu for more information, and check out the Honors College Facebook group.