Kadji Amin

Joined UVic Gender Studies in 2026

As a theorist, I focus on the historical genealogies of contemporary queer and trans political ideals and cultural values. My current book in progress, Trans Materialism without Gender Identity (under advanced contract with the Theory Q series of Duke University Press) argues in favor of abandoning gender identity as the core principle of transgender politics, culture, and medicine in North America. The monograph uses trans materialism as a method for analyzing the life paths and transition methods of passing men, street queens, heterosexual crossdressers, and transsexual women across the twentieth century. It demonstrates that material conditions played a greater role than gender identity in the transitions of each group. The lesson of this history, I argue, is a materialist politics of class solidarity with poor and sex-working trans women of color over and against the professional-class transgender hegemony promoted by the concept of gender identity.

Through a focus on prostitute, thief, author, and activist, Jean Genet (1910-1986), my first book, Disturbing Attachments: Genet, Modern Pederasty, and Queer History, interrogates the unspoken desires that orient the field of Queer Studies. Genet epitomizes the queer hope that social deviance and sexual transgression should birth radical art and politics. Disturbing Attachments troubles this expectation by focusing on the unsavory attachments – including pederasty, racial fetishism, nostalgia for prison, and fantasies of terrorism – behind Genet's activism with the Black Panthers and the Palestinians. The book demonstrates how contemporary queer attachments to anti-normativity, sexual transgression, and political radicalism bear the stamp of recent gay American history. Ultimately, Disturbing Attachments challenges scholars to disturb the idealizations of queer theory so that Queer Studies can reorient itself to an expanded range of geographic, historical, and racial subjects.

My research has been supported by a Cornell Society for the Humanities fellowship, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship on “Sex” from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Humanities Institute Faculty Fellowship from Stony Brook University. 

Research Interests

Transgender Studies, Queer and Sexuality Studies, History of Sexuality, Class and Political Economy, Racial Capitalism, Feminist Science Studies

Courses Designed and Taught

GNDR 309 Masculinities

GNDR 219 Sexualities

Selected Publications

In Progress

Under Contract     Book Manuscript: “Trans Materialism without Gender Identity,” Theory Q Series, Duke University Press

In Press                  “American Transgender Community as Crossdresser Hegemony,” C’est mort para-academic journal

Book

2017                   Disturbing Attachments: Genet, Modern Pederasty, and Queer History. Theory Q Series. Duke University Press.

Journal Articles

2023                      “Whither Trans Studies?: A Field at a Crossroads,” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. 10.1: 54-8.

2023                      “Taxonomically Queer?: Sexology and New Queer, Trans, and Asexual Identities,” GLQ:

                               A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. 29.1: 91-107.

2022                      “We Are All Non-Binary: A Brief History of Accidents,” Representations 158.1: 106-119.

                               Korean translation: 2024. "우리는 모두 논바이너리다 - 간략히 살펴보는 우연의 역사." Park, Hyun and Sooyoung Kim, Trans. /성이론 (Journal of Feminist Theories and Practices) 49: 166-188.

                               French translation: 2023. « Nous sommes toustes non-binaires: une brève histoire d’accidents ». Luki Fair, Trans. Trou Noir online journal. http://www.trounoir.org/?Nous-sommes-toustes-non-binaires-une-breve-histoire-d-accidents

2020                      “Trans* Plasticity and the Ontology of Race and Species.” Social Text 38.2: 49-72.

                               Republication: 2022. In The Transgender Studies Reader Remix. Eds. Susan Stryker and Dylan McCarthy Blackston, 265-277. New York: Routledge.

2018                      “Glands, Eugenics, and Rejuvenation in Man into Woman: A Biopolitical Genealogy of Transsexuality.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 5.4: 589-605.

2016                      “Against Queer Objects,” Feminist Formations 28.2: 101-111.

2016                      “Haunted by the 1990s: Queer Theory’s Affective Histories,” in “Queer Methods.” Special issue, Women’s Studies Quarterly 44.3: 173-189.

                                         Republication: 2019. In Imagining Queer Methods. Eds. Amin Ghazani

                                         and Matt Brim, 277-293. New York: New York University Press.

2015                      “‘Blesser’ le spectateur blanc américain: Les Nègres aux États-Unis, 1961-4 et 2003,” Études françaises 51.1: 67-80.

Refereed Book Chapters and Essays

2014                      “Temporality,” Transgender Studies Quarterly 1.1-2: 219-222.

2022                   “Trans Negative Affect,” in The Routledge Companion to Gender and

                           Affect. Ed. Todd Reeser. New York: Routledge University Press. 33-42.

2020                      “Genealogies of Queer Theory,” Cambridge Companion to Queer Studies. Ed. Siobhan Somerville. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 17-27.

Public Scholarship

2025                   “How Anti-Trans Attacks Forge the Anti-Social State,” Law and Political Economy Project Blog

2021                   “Two Transsexuals Talk Nonbinary,” Interview with Jules Gill-Peterson, Sad Brown Girl Substack

Affiliations

American Studies Association (ASA)

Modern Language Association (MLA)

National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA)