by Sophia Field (directed by Michelle Woods)

This thesis explores concepts of the body and the often fraught position that the body holds in transgender studies. Literature maps the body: it considers the manners in which bodies are represented and the normative ways that we engage with our own bodies and those of others. Broadly, dominant culture conceives the body to be discretely sexed in a matter that both precedes and determines gender identity and expression. Transgender studies enables a position on embodiment that allows the body to disrupt and potentially denaturalize the structures of gender. In contemporary transgender literature, we see the manifold ways that bodies can be problematic when they are enmeshed in normalized discourses and idealized fantasies of biological determinism. This thesis examines embodiment in Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts (2015) and Torrey Peters’ Detransition, Baby (2021), demonstrating how transgender, gender variant, and gender nonconforming bodies in these texts refigure and recontextualize the very notions of sex, gender, and identity, allowing for new expressions of the body and new ways to encounter and respond to difference.