TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 11.3:

 Trans* Ecologies

Guest editors: Erin L. Durban and Megan Moore

Eva Hayward (2022) inquires, “Can trans mean anything to ecology? If so, what?” The guest editors of this issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly offer Hayward’s question as an invitation to artists, activists, and scholars to consider the possibilities of combining trans* analytics and undisciplined environmental and ecological thinking. The issue follows the Queer & Trans Ecologies Symposium that took place at the University of Minnesota in spring 2023.

Ecology as a concept holds within itself many paradigms that are becoming increasingly mangled by the quality of crises emerging in this post-pandemic world. Arising out of both evolutionary theory and organicist thought, ecology came to challenge the mechanistic cosmologies of early modernists who believed there to be linear, inner logics to living forms that operated akin to machines. Yet ecology has also found itself tossed back and forth between the nature-technics divide, or the question of how the inorganic relates to the organic, as ecological thought often incorporates the inorganic within its tracing of organic systems. Thus, at the heart of ecological problems are questions of control, agency, and the power of organic (or perhaps cosmic) flows to transform life. The growth of ecology as a discipline took off in the mid-20th century in conjunction with the field of cybernetics, both attempting to do “systems theory” and reconfigure questions of social control in the post-WWII era. Ecology’s resurgence in popularity today can be seen as connected to the technological quality of the present ecological disasters; how to relate to mass death and destruction when it spirals through systems, how to understand technological change alongside climate change, how to conjure a political “we” that has the agency to shift ecosystems. Responses to these questions arrive in the concepts of “non-natural ecologies” (Peter K. Haff), “technoecology” (Eric Hörl), and “cosmotechnics” (Yuk Hui) that attempt different versions of re-conceptualizing the problems imparted by the nature-technics divide via non-modern ontologies. While this literature finds itself converging with feminist thought in its exploration of non-rationalist “relations”, trans*ness brings up questions about relationships between technology, reproduction, and the body that are themselves ecological questions. How can one think techniques of changing the body as emerging with one’s environment and access? What can trans*ness offer this re-conceptualizing of the nature-techne divide?

While there is a growing literature in “trans* ecologies,” this relatively new area of inquiry is still in formation. Therefore, the potential perspectives, subjects, and themes of this work are an open question—the list below of topics is meant to be generative rather than prescriptive or confining. However, the guest editors encourage intersectional submissions with an analysis of power that are informed by related fields of Black ecologies, ecofeminism, feminist science and technology studies, queer ecology, decolonial ecologies, abolition ecologies, and crip ecologies. 

What can trans* embodiments, engagements, perspectives, and activism as well as the provocations of trans* studies teach us about…

• Air 
• Animals and animalities
• Atmosphere
• Biomes
• Biospheres
• Capitalism and extractive economies
• Climate change
• Colonialism and imperialism
• Conservation
• Ecocriticism and environmental literature
• Ecological theory
• Ecosystems
• Elements
• Environmental art
• Environmental discourse
• Environmental justice
• Environmental policy and politics
• Environmental racism
• Extinction
• Field research
• Food 
• Fungi
• Health
• Land
• Lawns and gardens
• Life
• Multispecies relations
• Microbiomes
• Militarism
• “Natural Sciences”
• Naturopathy
• Natural history museums
• Parks
• Plants and Botanicals
• Pollution 
• Public spaces
• Recreation and leisure
• Spatial politics
• States of matter
• Taxidermy
• Taxonomies
• Toxicity
• Water
• “Waste”
• Weather?

Likewise, in what ways can critical environmental and ecological thinking generate new possibilities for trans* studies and politics?

We welcome submissions to “Trans* Ecologies” in the form of:

• Research articles (5,000-7,000 words);
• Reviews (less than 5,000 words)—approval needed from editors before submission;
• Creative fiction and nonfiction;
• Visual art (300dpi or greater);
• Syllabi and teaching materials.

Reading resources are listed at http://www.queerandtransecologies.com.

Send any questions about submissions to qtecologies@umn.edu.

Please send complete submissions by September 1, 2023. To submit a manuscript, please visit https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/dup-tsq. Please note that TSQ, like other Duke University Press Journals, has moved to ScholarOne, replacing the prior Editorial Manager platform. If this is your first time using ScholarOne, please register first, then proceed with submitting your manuscript. If you have any difficulties with the process, contact the journal at tsqjournal at gmail.com. All manuscripts must be double-spaced, including quotations and endnotes, and blinded throughout. You must also submit an abstract, keywords, and biographical note at the time of initial submission. Please visit the editorial office's website for a detailed style guide. 

TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly is an academic journal edited by Francisco J. Galarte, Jules Gill-Peterson, and Abraham B. Weil, and published by Duke University Press. TSQ aims to be the journal of record for the interdisciplinary field of transgender studies and to promote the widest possible range of perspectives on transgender phenomena broadly defined. One issue of TSQ each year is a non-themed open call, with the other three issues devoted to special themes; every issue also contains regularly recurring features such as reviews, interviews, and opinion pieces. To learn more about the journal and see calls for papers for other special issues, https://femresin.unm.edu/transgender-studies-quarterly/board.html.