Perry Zurn
@perryzurn
Prof @AmericanU. Interested in political theory, social movements, LGBTQ life, and fungi. Author @UMinnPress @mitpress @dukepress
I'm trying desperately to bring the next book in at 70k words. A little lighter and sweeter than my usual. Hopefully first draft done this summer.
I think of May/June as the giddy, freefall months of academic summer, where all the dream projects begin. And I think of July as the month of "If you intend to do X this summer, start X now." It's an important pivot into a very different temporality. Also, this is when the lepiota appear.
Seem to have a double rainbow on my hands! Just really need a green book next…
A book about Lohana Berkins, travesti activist/theorist. I appreciated how in telling her story she ended up immortalizing so many travestis’ stories. As if one couldn’t tell her story alone. As if each deserved to be told as much as the next. As if spotlights are to be shared, diffused, defracted.
OMG it arrived in person! Personing right into my hands! @dukepress.bsky.social
I enjoyed these two books! Andrea D'Atri's Bread and Roses (a Marxist feminist history, with special focus on Latin America [2004]) and Patricio Simonetto's A Body of One's Own (a travesti and trans history of Argentina [2024]). I especially appreciated exploring the overlaps in the two movements.
Coming soon! The "Trans Philosophy" special issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly! Co-edited with Talia Mae Bettcher, and featuring Jacob Hale on the cover. Will post again when the links go live next week, but was too excited to wait. @dukepress.bsky.social
These are the 4 books that most changed how I thought about & wrote *How We Make Each Other: Trans Life at the Edge of the University*. I'd love to talk more about that process. You can get it (& pre-order Cisgender) from @dukepress.bsky.social 40% off, SPRING26. www.dukeupress.edu/how-we-make-...
After many years in this place, I finally hung something on my office wall. throwback to my college days. I never smoked, but otherwise vibe still just as apt!
The universe was listening! @dukepress.bsky.social posted the intro to *Cisgender.* You get to read vignettes about my grandmother & Leslie Feinberg & Audre Lorde... & wrestle with what they do to the cis category. You also get a peak at why disorientation is my framework of choice. bit.ly/4vKd53u
AU's honors program started in 1959. One of its professors described its objective thus: "to make the student think strangely." Defamiliarize habits of thought, & thereby equip students to critically engage across difference & construct meaningful beliefs of their own. I like it: THINK STRANGELY.
All, I recently became aware of this book set entitled WOMAN: IN ALL AGES AND IN ALL COUNTRIES (1907). Grandiose indeed. And of course, none of its 10 volumes was written by a woman.
Look who is reading this book with me! (Or teaching me?) Del McWhorter, Unbecoming Persons (2025), pictured with stink bug.
The ice is falling. I’m shoveling our place. And the 92 year old neighbor’s. And another neighbor walks up and hands me a steaming loaf of fresh baked bread. How to even comprehend that I am alive for this. For now. Today. And how quickly, and cruelly, those todays can be taken.
In January, I start teaching a grad seminar on disability justice. I'd welcome word of any favorite pieces/books you might have! [image of a stack of books in disability studies--books I'm thinking with, though not necessarily teaching]