The Queer Studies Speaker Series welcomes LaVelle Ridley, assistant professor of Queer/Trans* Studies in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Ohio State University. Ridley will present her lecture, “Imagining Freedom by Getting My Life: Black Trans/Queer Life Writing for Livability,” at 8 p.m., Monday, March 2, in Higley Hall Auditorium.
Ridley’s research and teaching interests meet at the intersection of queer and transgender studies, Black feminisms, and literary and cultural studies of racialized gender and sexuality.
Through life writing, film, and media, she observes how trans women of color use imagination critically to transform the world at large. She is working on her first book project, tentatively titled Imagining Freedom: Critical Trans* Imagination in Black Trans Life Narratives which articulates how Black trans women life writers such as Janet Mock, CeCe McDonald, and Venus Selenite engage in political freedom-making through their life narratives.
Ridley also engages in interdisciplinary collaboration in academic and community spaces, particularly around prison abolition, oral history, and understanding the cultural philosophies of queer and trans people of color. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Feminist Studies, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, and TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, the latter for which she serves as book reviews editor. Ridley is also coediting the forthcoming anthology, Paradise on the Margins: Worldmaking by Trans Women of Color.
