Join us for a unique opportunity to hear from a leading contemporary voice in trans studies. In her lecture, Professor Emma Heaney from New York University will discuss whether we should continue to view gender through the lens of a binary framework.
Rethinking gender and society
Professor Emma Heaney challenges the traditional frameworks for understanding gender and presents a bold argument: scholars should shift their focus from the binary concept of gender to a deeper analysis of cisness and patriarchy. Drawing on research presented in the book Feminism Against Cisness, Professor Heaney suggests that both theoretical and historical precision will benefit from redirecting attention from the false universality of the gender binary or the proliferation of gender categories to understanding how the concept of cisness—the assumption that being cisgender (identifying with with the gender assigned at birth) is natural—serves social orders based on race and class.
About the speaker
Emma Heaney
Clinical Assistant Professor
Emma Heaney is a Clinical Assistant Professor and Faculty Advisor for the Advanced Certificate in Experimental Writing in the Experimental Humanities & Social Engagement Program at New York University. She authored the book The New Woman: Literary Modernism, Queer Theory, and the Trans Feminine Allegory (Northwestern UP, 2017) and is the editor of the essay collection Feminism Against Cisness (Duke UP, 2024). Her upcoming collection of essays on the conceptual and political provocations of gestation, entitled This Watery Place, will be published by Pluto Press in August 2025.
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Date and Location
January 24, 2025, 18:00–19:30 CET (UTC+1)
SWPS University in Warsaw, Chodakowska 19/31