ABOUT THIS BOOK

Trans people have always lived in the cracks of institutions—and the university is no exception. In How We Make Each Other, Perry Zurn tells the stories of how trans people make and live their lives at the edges of the university in ways that sometimes lead to policy change but always leave participants and institutions different than they were before. Using the Five Colleges in Massachusetts as a case study, Zurn notes that Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, have been at the forefront of developing trans-inclusive policies in higher education, often in response to student organizing. Zurn focuses on the stories of trans students, staff, faculty, and community members within and alongside these institutions, exploring how they have built themselves and each other. Drawing on official archives as well as over 100 interviews, Zurn shows how trans people in the Five Colleges have made history, forged resistance habits, and cultivated hope.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Perry Zurn is Visiting Associate Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Cornell University, Provost Associate Professor of Philosophy at American University, author of Curiosity and Power: The Politics of Inquiry, coauthor of Curious Minds: The Power of Connection, and coeditor of Trans Philosophy.

REVIEWS

“Trans life grows in impossible places. In How We Make Each Other, Perry Zurn charts a rhizomatic story of how trans life in excess of liberal scripts of inclusion has and might yet grow in the university—one such impossible place. I cannot wait to teach this book, to nourish and provide historicity to my students’ agitation, their unruly sociality, and their sense that another university is possible---is, in fact, what they make together every day.”
-- Cameron Awkward-Rich, author of The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment

“In giving careful attention to the ingenuity and radicality of trans makers and movements, Perry Zurn is simultaneously documenting and creating new epistemologies of transness. He helps us read transness in the university not as a problem but as a jubilant more-ness beyond the dichotomy of problem and solution. In his compelling, lovely, and often heartbreaking renderings, trans life is a form of creation that draws on direct action, linguistic experimentation, and joyful solidarity to find alliances and forge community. This book will be cherished and loved by many people for a very long time to come.”
-- Gayle Salamon, author of The Life and Death of Latisha King: A Critical Phenomenology of Transphobia

“This book is lovely! Perry Zurn has an unusually graceful way with words, and what he’s saying is powerful stuff.”
-- Sandy Stone, author, artist, performer, engineer, and debonair trans-about-town

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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