Jamey Jesperson

Bio

Jamey is a Vanier Scholar and PhD Candidate in History and Cultural, Social, and Political Thought. She specializes in trans histories of Indigenous and colonial North America, with a regional focus on the Pacific coast. Through ‘storywork’ collaboration with Two-Spirit Knowledge Keeper Saylesh Wesley, Jamey’s dissertation re-narrates the history of ‘contact’ in the Pacific Northwest as experienced and shaped by trans Indigenous people in the long nineteenth century.

Awards & Honours

2024-25 DEI Research Fellowship (Society for Historians of the Early American Republic)
2024 Gregory Sprague Prize (LGBTQ+ History Association)
2023-26 Vanier Graduate Scholarship
2023 Graduate Student Essay Prize (Gender & History Journal)
2022 Rees Davies Prize for Best M.A. Dissertation in the UK (Royal Historical Society)
2016 Outstanding B.A. Thesis Award (The New School)
2016 David S. Woods Humanitarian Award (The New School)

Affiliations

UVic Department of Gender Studies, Sessional Instructor
UVic Chair in Transgender Studies, MTHF Committee Member
UVic Graduate History Review, Co-Editor

Publications

Jesperson, Jamey. “Trans Sex Work in Colonial North America: A Herstory.” In Histories of Sex Work Around the World, edited by Catherine Phipps, 49-68. New York: Routledge, 2024.

Jesperson, Jamey and Saylesh Wesley. “‘Waking to Dream’: The Life Stories of Saylesh Wesley, Trans Stó:lō Elder-to-Be.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 10, nos. 3-4 (Fall 2023): 265-300.

Gust, Onni and Jamey Jesperson. “History Beyond the Gender Binary.” In The Oxford Handbook of LGBTQ History, edited by Howard Chiang and Dominic Janes (expected Spring 2024).

Jesperson, Jamey and Saylesh Wesley. “‘Waking to Dream’: The Life Stories of Saylesh Wesley, Trans Stó:lō Elder-to-Be.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 10, no. 3 (expected Fall 2023). Also available at Stó:lō Library & Archives (2022).

Jesperson, Jamey. “Trans Misogyny in the Colonial Archive: Re-Membering Trans Feminine Life & Death in New Spain, 1604-1821.” Gender & History 35, no. 3 (2023): 1-21. **winner of 2023 Gender & History Graduate Student Essay Prize & 2024 Gregory Sprague Prize**

Jesperson, Jamey. [book review] “Female Husbands: A Trans History, by Jen Manion.” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 17, no. 2 (Spring 2023): 420-24.

Jesperson, Jamey. “Settler TransNationalism: The Colonial Politics of White Trans Passing on Stolen Land.” Spectator 42, no. 1 (Spring 2022): 32-43.

Jesperson, Jamey. “Honouring Trans Lives, Historicising Trans Death.” History Workshop. November 20, 2020.

Conferences & Lectures (selected)

“Re-Storying Trans Indigenous Contact in the Pacific Northwest,” MacEwan University, National Queer and Trans+ Community History Conference [2024]

“Trans Misogyny in the Colonial Archive: A Sex Worker’s Counter-History,” University of Toronto [2024]

“Trans Misogyny in the Colonial Archive,” University of Cardiff, Intersec+ions Seminar Series [2023]

“Historicizing Trans Death / Theorizing Trans Survivance,” University of Victoria, Cultural, Social, & Political Thought Colloquium [2023]

“‘Re-Membering’ Indigenous Trans Femininity in the Alta California Missions, 1769-1821,” Berkshire Conference of Women Historians [2023]                   

“‘Re-Membering’ Trans Femininity in the Mexican Sodomy Trials of 1656-1658,” University of York, “Transgender Embodiment, 1400—1700” [2023]

“‘Waking to Dream’: The Life Stories of Saylesh Wesley, Trans Stó:lō Elder-to-Be,” University of Victoria, Moving Trans History Forward Conference [2023]             

“Trans Misogyny in the Colonial Archive: Colonial México,” University of Cambridge, Gender & Sexuality History Workshop [2023]

“Transmisogyny in the Colonial Archive: ‘Re-Membering’ Transfeminine Life & Death,” University of Oxford, History of the Gendered Body Seminar Series [2022]

“Trans & Intersex Relationships to Hormones: A History,” University of Victoria, “Theorizing Hormones” course [2022]

“Transmisogyny in the Colonial Archive: ‘Re-Membering’ Gendercide in the American West.” Gender & History, Historicising Trans Pasts Colloquium [2022]

“Critical Indigenous Studies x Trans Studies,” Modern Language Association, Early Modern Race x Trans Studies Roundtable [2022]

“Trans History on Stolen Land: Tracing the Settler Colonial Roots of Gender in North America” En-Gender! 2021 Conference [2021]

“Transnationalism as Assemblage: The Colonial Politics of Trans ‘Passing’ in the US,” University of Southern California, First Forum: “Passing” [2020]

“Brutal Binaries: Trans Settler Amnesia & the History of Gender(cide) in Early America,” Wadham College, University of Oxford, Trans & Nonbinary History Workshop [2020]