This autumn, I was lucky enough to be asked to teach a class at UMass on “Science, Values and Transgender Medicine” - or as I think of it, “Trans Science”. As the course guide put it:
This interdisciplinary honors seminar provides an introduction to Science and Technology Studies (STS) – the study of the social and political facets of scientific research – by focusing on the case study of debates around transgender medicine. With this case study, along with broader STS readings, we will explore the role of science in society, the ways social values and cultural frames shape scientific research, and the role scientific study plays in public debates and policymaking.
It was a fun class and a fun group! I’m posting the syllabus just in case it’s useful to someone.
Science and Medicine
- Mongtomery, Kathryn. How doctors think: Clinical judgment and the practice of medicine. Oxford University Press, 2005, Chapters 1-2.
What gets studied, and why?
- Koenig, Barbara A. “The technological imperative in medical practice: The social creation of a “routine” treatment.” Biomedicine examined. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 1988. 465-496.
Starting and Studying trans medicine
- Keyes, Trans Science, University of Washington Press, 2027, Chapter 2
Uncertainty and doubt
- Velocci, Beans. “Standards of care: uncertainty and risk in Harry Benjamin’s transsexual classifications.” Transgender Studies Quarterly 8.4 (2021): 462-480.
Clinical research under uncertainty
- Keyes, “Legally, we’re okay, but ethically, I’m not sure” (unpublished manuscript)
Evaluating trans medicine
- Meyer, Jon K., and Donna J. Reter. “Sex reassignment: Follow-up.” Archives of General Psychiatry 36.9 (1979): 1010-1015.
- Fleming, M., C. Steinman, and G. Bocknek. “Methodological problems in assessing sex-reassignment surgery: a reply to Meyer and Reter.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 9.5 (1980): 451-456.
Evaluating evaluations
- Health Information Designs Ltd., “Developing of an information database on transsexual surgery”
Contemporary clinics
- Latham, Jonathan R. “(Re) making sex: A praxiography of the gender clinic.” Feminist Theory 18.2 (2017): 177-204.
Framing gender
- Spade, Dean. “Resisting medicine, re/modeling gender.” Berkeley Women’s Law Journal 18 (2003): 15.
Expanding care
- Hanssmann, Christoph. Care without pathology: how trans-health activists are changing medicine. U of Minnesota Press, 2023, Chapter 4
Ideologies of regression
- Corredor, Elizabeth S. “Unpacking “gender ideology” and the global right’s antigender countermovement.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 44.3 (2019): 613-638.
Practices of regression
- TransLash podcast, “a coordinated attack on trans youth” and “money, power and a radical vision” episodes.