While academic labs can inadvertently maintain the colonial, cisheteropatriarchal order that they emerge from, the Transgender Media Lab (TML) at Carleton University strives to disrupt oppressive power structures while acknowledging that the lab cannot escape them entirely. The TML was formed to build the Transgender Media Portal, which aims to make audiovisual work by trans, Two Spirit, nonbinary, intersex, and gender-nonconforming people more available. This chapter discusses the TML’s work to create a lab that is fair, caring, transparent, and in line with trans, anti-racist, anti-colonial, feminist, queer, and crip values. Inspired by the feminist anti-colonial environmental lab CLEAR, the TML created a lab handbook to articulate the lab’s collectively determined values, as well as guidelines and protocols for putting these values into action. The TML also strives to be responsive and accountable to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color trans communities. By following the lead of social justice activists, the TML aims to align their lab’s actions with their values at all levels of their work.
Read open access articleAn exciting introduction to cinema by the trans creators who are innovating filmmaking to imagine a more inclusive world.
Since the 1990s, a largely underground upwelling of trans creativity has helped new trans identities, communities, and political movements come together. In Trans Cinema, Laura Horak provides an entryway to the wildly diverse and creative cinema made by trans creators, including those who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color. Overlooked until now, this rich collection of media ranges in genre from romantic comedies to horror films and asks essential questions about how to be human and how to craft a livable life in a world on fire.
Using the fundamentals of film studies, Horak reveals the innovative approaches taken by trans and gender-nonconforming artists to explore how we relate to other people, what it's like to have a body, and how we survive in an oppressive society. These filmmakers tackle the challenging paradox of representing trans lives when greater visibility is associated with ever-increasing levels of harm. In the process, they produce art that emphasizes trans survival and resilience and imagines a more expansive world for trans communities.
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