Mobile Subjects
The first famous transgender person in the United States, Christine Jorgensen, traveled to Denmark for gender reassignment surgery in 1952. Jorgensen became famous during the ascent of postwar dreams about the possibilities for technology to transform humanity and the world. In Mobile Subjects Aren Z. Aizura examines transgender narratives within global health and tourism economies from 1952 to the present. Drawing on an archive of trans memoirs and documentaries as well as ethnographic fieldwork with trans people obtaining gender reassignment surgery in Thailand, Aizura maps the uneven use of medical protocols to show how national and regional health care systems and labor economies contribute to and limit transnational mobility. Aizura positions transgender travel as a form of biomedical tourism, examining how understandings of race, gender, and aesthetics shape global cosmetic surgery cultures and how economic and racially stratified marketing and care work create the ideal transgender subject as an implicitly white, global citizen. In so doing, he shows how understandings of travel and mobility depend on the historical architectures of colonialism and contemporary patterns of global consumption and labor.
Social SciencesGender StudiesEthnic Studies
RELEASED2018
PUBLISHERDuke University Press
LENGTH296
LANGUAGEENGLISH
Aren Aizura is an assistant professor in Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies. He brings expertise in queer theory, transgender studies, transnationality and immigration, and political economy and labor. Aizura earned a PhD in cultural studies from the University of Melbourne and before joining the University of Minnesota was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers University. He also held a post-doctoral fellowship in Gender, Race and Science in the Department of Gender Studies at Indiana University.
Mobile Subjects
The first famous transgender person in the United States, Christine Jorgensen, traveled to Denmark for gender reassignment surgery in 1952. Jorgensen became famous during the ascent of postwar dreams about the possibilities for technology to transform humanity and the world. In Mobile Subjects Aren Z. Aizura examines transgender narratives within global health and tourism economies from 1952 to the present. Drawing on an archive of trans memoirs and documentaries as well as ethnographic fieldwork with trans people obtaining gender reassignment surgery in Thailand, Aizura maps the uneven use of medical protocols to show how national and regional health care systems and labor economies contribute to and limit transnational mobility. Aizura positions transgender travel as a form of biomedical tourism, examining how understandings of race, gender, and aesthetics shape global cosmetic surgery cultures and how economic and racially stratified marketing and care work create the ideal transgender subject as an implicitly white, global citizen. In so doing, he shows how understandings of travel and mobility depend on the historical architectures of colonialism and contemporary patterns of global consumption and labor.
Social SciencesGender StudiesEthnic Studies
RELEASED2018
PUBLISHERDuke University Press
LENGTH296
LANGUAGEENGLISH
Aren Aizura is an assistant professor in Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies. He brings expertise in queer theory, transgender studies, transnationality and immigration, and political economy and labor. Aizura earned a PhD in cultural studies from the University of Melbourne and before joining the University of Minnesota was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers University. He also held a post-doctoral fellowship in Gender, Race and Science in the Department of Gender Studies at Indiana University.
