B Lee Aultman
Lecturer in Political Science
I teach courses in American politics, queer and trans studies, critical race theory, and theories of democratic organizing. My research concerns ordinary life among trans communities. I have published on a range of topics concerning American political institutions and contributed a number of essays and commissioned articles on trans politics and theories of gender. My current research project is based upon my first book manuscript, A Politics of the Trans Ordinary, now under review with SUNY Press. In that project, I re-describe the contemporary and historical experiences of trans communities through a renewed focus on ordinary life. My aim in this project is to shed light on what has otherwise remained outside the ambit of political theories of non-normative gender/sex and racialized subjectivities. Here, ordinary life entails more than the routine rhythms that situate a subject’s sense of ongoing-ness in the world. The ordinary is also a spatial and temporal site in which the everyday violence of phobic and racist practices are met, mitigated, and mediated. In my view this creates the grounds for a politics that is precisely trans. Affects and sensations attending ordinary life-making tend to be shared across the multiple ordinaries I discuss. These affects are not copies of each other. Rather, they are consonant with and responses to the material conditions, historical boundaries, and localized pressures that interweave to form the relation of a subject to their world. The source material for that project is a combination of archival and documentary materials. The former material was gathered during a summer-long research made possible by graduate research grants to the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada. Additionally, these include a number of literary texts that I define as part of the trans genre. The latter material includes recent docu-series and popular representation of trans communities in news and cinematic media.
B is nonbinary, identifies as transfeminine, and uses they/them pronouns.
More About Me
I’m a co-host of the critical theory podcast, The Always Already Podcast.
My personal website is www.bleeaultman.com.
Click HERE for their most current CV.
Research Interests
Trans Politics, Queer Theory, Gender Studies, Phenomenology, Affect Theory, Critical Race Studies
Representative Courses
Radical Organizing
Queer Politics
Culture, Identity, and Behavior
Introduction to US Politics
Democracy, Money, and Power
Junior Seminar
International Relations
Publications
Books
A Politics of the Trans Ordinary: Archival Objects and the Endurance of Transness. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Under advance contract. Signed May 31st, 2020. Manuscript expected for review August 31st, 2020.
Journal Articles
2019a “Injurious Acts: Notes on Happiness from the Trans Ordinary.” In “Happiness,” edited by Juliane Roemhild. Special issue, Writing from Below.
2019b “The Trans Complaint: Contributions to the Disagreement about Desire.” In “Media, Activism, and Social Development,” edited by Bekeh Ukelina. Special issue, Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies. 20 (Fall): 86-113.
2016 “Epistemic Injustice and the Construction of Transgender Legal Subjects.” In “Epistemic Injustice in Practice,” edited by Franziska Dübgen. Special issue, Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies. 15 (Summer): 11-34.
2014 “Cisgender.” In “Postposttranssexual: Key Concepts for a Twenty-First Century Transgender Studies,” edited by Susan Stryker and Paisley Currah. Special issue, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. 1, no. 1-2 (May): 61-62.
Commissioned Articles
Forthcoming “The Rise of Trans Social Movements: Narrative Symbolism and History.” For The Oxford Encyclopedia of LGBT Politics and Policy, edited by Don Haider-Markel. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Forthcoming “Discrimination.” In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies, edited by Genny Beemyn and Annie Goldberg. New York: SAGE.
2019c “Nonbinary Trans Identities.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia of LGBT Politics and Policy, edited by Don Haider-Markel. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Book Chapters
Forthcoming “Was Magneto Right? Theorizing a Nonnormative Politics of Love.” For The Futures of Cartoons Past: The Culture Politics of X-Men: The Animated Series, edited by Jeremy M. Carnes, Margaret Galvan, and Nicholas E. Miller. (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi).
2017 with Paisley Currah. “Politics Outside the Law: Transgender Life and the Challenge of Legibility.” In LGBTQ Politics: A Critical Reader, edited by Marla Brettschneider, Susan Burgess and Cricket Keating, 34-53. New York: New York University Press.
2011a with Raymond Smith. “Depoliticize the Creation of Congressional Districts.” In Importing Democracy: Ideas from Around the World to Reform and Revitalize American Politics and Government, by Raymond Smith, 141-149. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.
2011b _____.“Empower the Courts to Issue Advisory Opinions”. In Importing Democracy: Ideas from Around the World to Reform and Revitalize American Politics and Government, by Raymond Smith, 159-166. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.
Dissertation
2018 “Feeling as Knowing: Trans Phenomenology and Epistemic Justice.” Committee: Paisley Currah (Chair), Linda Martín Alcoff, Alyson Cole.
Presentations / Conferences
“Manifestos and the Political Aesthetics of Desire.” Talk given at the “Thursday School,” Media Arts MFA Program, Purchase College, Purchase, NY. December 5, 2019.
“Reading Melanie Klein’s ‘A Study of Envy and Gratitude’ with Mariana Ortega’s ‘Hometactics.’”Sound Education Conference. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. November 3, 2018.