New and Decolonial Approaches to Gender Nonconformity

This open access book features a diverse collective of arts and humanities researchers, educators and creative practitioners, sharing their thoughts and experiences of how to approach gender nonconformity creatively and ethically, including from a decolonial perspective.

While substantial work has addressed the ethics and practicalities of working with trans and gender-nonconforming participants in social science research, approaches to gender nonconformity in arts and humanities research, teaching and practice still remain underexplored. Here, contributors share their thoughts and experience on topics including centring trans people and people of colour in fan adaptations of Les Misérables; moving beyond medicalised approaches to trans history; responding to the early modern history of gender nonconformity through poetic-performative closet dramas; and using trans history to decolonise history teaching. The editors’ draw out the book’s practical and theoretical implications, reflecting on what it means for marginalised people to ‘forge a home’ within the arts and humanities in our contemporary political moment.

This book is an invaluable resource for academics, educators, performers and activists invested in finding new, trans-affirming, decolonial and anti-racist ways to engage with gender nonconformity in their work.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Bloomsbury Open Collections Library Collective.

Kit Heyam is a writer, a heritage practitioner and a trans awareness trainer specializing in higher education. Their academic work explores new, interdisciplinary approaches to the history of gender and sexuality, and they have taught at institutions including the University of Surrey, Queen Mary University of London, Northumbria University and King’s College London. They are the author of The Reputation of Edward II, 1305–1697: A Literary Transformation of History (2020) and Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender (2022), which was a nominee for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Nonfiction and a History Today book of the year.

Jonathan Ward is Lecturer in Race and Diversity Studies at King’s College London, UK. Jon is the founder of The Abolitionist Curriculum, an open-access resource which centres engagement with the multiplicities of Blackness, and has written multiple publications discussing Blackness, gender and nation within popular culture .