Transgendering the Academy Pauline Park

 
This talk will focus on how an academic background helps to inform advocacy work and how activism in turn can help inform theory construction and academic institution-building. The topics will include possible avenues for “transgendering” the academy through a queering of the curriculum and the faculty as well as the development of infrastructure, such as the establishment of LGBT student services offices on college campuses. The talk will offer thoughts on how to pursue theory construction that is both accessible and relevant to the communities being theorized about, as well as useful to those communities in advancing a progressive and inclusive public policy agenda. Pauline Park was born in Korea and did her BA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, her MSc at the London School of Economics, and her PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana. She cofounded Queens Pride House and Iban/Queer Koreans of New York in 1997. Park currently serves as chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy a statewide transgender advocacy organization that she cofounded in 1998, and as copresident of the Out People of Color Political Action Club, the first political club by and for LGBT people of color in New York City, which she cofounded in 2001, as well as vice president of the board of directors of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund. Park led the campaign for the transgender rights law enacted by the New York City Council in 2002. In 2005, she became the first openly transgendered grand marshal of the New York City Pride March. Park has written widely on LGBT issues and has conducted transgender sensitivity training sessions for a wide range of organizations. She was the subject of Envisioning Justice: The Journey of a Transgendered Woman, a documentary that premiered in 2008.