Rehearsals & Refusals: notes on trans* imagination

Join us on February 28, 2024 for the talk “Rehearsals & Refusals: notes on trans* imagination” with Alan Pelaez Lopez (@migrantscribble). This is the inaugural lecture in our new speaker series Crossings: Conversations from the &, curated by Dr. Qui Alexander and Dr. SA Smythe. Reserve your ticket at uoft.me/crossings2024.

About The Talk
Gender and sexual diversity are categories mobilized by countries in the Global North to narrate progress, liberal democracy, and unity. However, these same countries force trans* migrants into nonconsensual performance contracts in exchange for conditional protection. Rehearsals & Refusals is a poetic and theoretical address that centers the lived experiences of Black trans* migrants who have been illegalized by Western empires. The talk attends to the way trans* migrants rehearse the performative junctions of race and gender to practice refusal and activate a radical trans*imagination. By weaving Black trans* studies and Indigenous studies, Rehearsals & Refusals proposes kinship and dreaming as methods that negate empire.

About the Speaker
Alan Pelaez Lopez (AfroZapotec) is an artist and scholar from Oaxaca, Mexico invested in the Black Indigenous imagination, trans futurities, abstraction, and opacity.

Image Credit: Jess X Snow (@jessxsnow), “I Will Never Stop Reaching For You,” 2015