CFP: Chapters for "Transgender Science and Technology"

Chapter proposals are invited for the edited book Transgender Science and Technology, due by April 20, 2020. Ben Barres’ The Autobiography of a Transgender Scientist provides insights into the lived experience of a prominent scientist who was transgender. This new book extends that work by fostering novel insights into science and technology by viewing them through specifically transgender perspectives. Confirmed contributors include leading scholars in transgender studies, such as University of California, Davis historian of science Howard Chiang, editor of Transgender China and member of the editorial board of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly.

Interested authors should send a 300-word abstract, 200-word biography, and sample of a previously published chapter or article to Dr. Douglas Vakoch at [email protected] by April 20, 2020. Authors will be notified whether their proposals are accepted by April 30, 2020. First drafts of full chapters (8,000 words) are due by November 1, 2020, and final versions are due January 15, 2021. Both transgender and cisgender contributors are welcome. Preference will be given to authors who have completed their doctorates. Only previously unpublished works will be considered.

This volume is modeled after Dr. Vakoch’s earlier book Transecology: Transgender Perspectives on Environment and Nature. Contributors to that book used major concepts from both ecology and gender studies to examine intimacy, connection, exclusion, identity, and emplacement. For example, these chapters examined Susan Stryker’s notion of trans identity as “ontologically inescapable,” Timothy Morton’s concept of “mesh” to explore the interconnectedness of all beings, Stacy Alaimo’s notion of “trans-corporeality” as a “contact zone” between humans and the environment, Judith Butler’s analysis of gender as “performative,” with those who are not “properly gendered” being seen as “abjects”—and Julia Serano’s contrasting rejection of gender as performance.

In a similar manner, for Transgender Science and Technology we are seeking proposals that examine the specific science or technology that is the focus of each chapter using insights from transgender theory and experience. The core question that motivates the book is “How can we better understand the nature and development of specific sciences and technologies through a transgender lens?” Proposals that explicitly critique cisnormativity and cissexism are especially welcome.

We are seeking contributions from an international group of scholars representing a range of disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences, and technology—as well as fields in the humanities that study and critique these disciplines including but not limited to anthropology, astronomy, biology, biotechnology, chemistry, computer science, ecology, economics, engineering, environmental studies, gender studies, geography, geology, history and philosophy of science, information technology, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, public health, queer studies, science and technology studies, sociology, sociology of science, and transgender studies.

The editor of Transgender Science and Technology, Dr. Douglas Vakoch, is president of METI, a scientific organization dedicated to Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence, as well as professor emeritus of clinical psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. His sixteen previous edited books include The Drake Equation: Estimating the Prevalence of Extraterrestrial Life Through the Ages (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Ecopsychology, Phenomenology, and the Environment (Springer, 2014), Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication (NASA, 2014), and Psychology of Space Exploration (NASA, 2011). He serves as the editor-in-chief of Springer’s Space and Society book series and general editor of Ecocritical Theory and Practice, published by Lexington Books, an imprint of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group.