Perry Zurn
@perryzurn.bsky.social
Prof @AmericanU. Interested in political theory, social movements, LGBTQ life, and fungi. Author @UMinnPress @mitpress @dukepress https://www.perryzurn.com/
3 years ago, I drove to Maria Lugones' old property. My aim: to meet the mushrooms she knew & wrote about. My reflections on that experience (here: muse.jhu.edu/article/981388 ), are the first time I worked philosophically with my lifelong admiration of fungi. Hope to do more! Also met these cuties:
Jacks are back! Naturally bioluminescent, although I've never seen it.
Did you know caterpillar (L. catta-pilosus) means hairy cat? You're welcome!
I use "genealogy" to describe much of the work in *Cisgender*. While I find some origins, I am more interested in lines of descent & emergence. One goal for me was to emancipate us from the category's constraints & fill it to bursting w/ incongruent stories. sites.google.com/view/critica...
Critical Genealogies Workshop
The Critical Genealogies Workshop provides a space of collaboration and experimentation for theorists from any discipline who deploy genealogy in order to investigate problematizations of the contempo...
sites.google.com
A fun addition to *Cisgender* is a glossary of cis+ terms. I didn't include "cisn't" but could have. It means "not cis." But it also suggests a secondary conjunction: "cis-isn't." "I'm not cis" & "Cis isn't what you think it is." Related "cis(disside)nt" adds militant refusal to factual correction.
thanking the academic gods every day that it is still not-yet-August.
If you're looking for a (teachable!) intro to my *Cisgender* book -- & why disability, race, coloniality, queerness, & citation politics are so crucial to how we need to rethink the term, check out my convo w/ the amazing @lenamattheis.bsky.social on Queer Lit! www.spreaker.com/episode/cisg...
“Cisgender” with Perry Zurn
Who coined the term cis and why are some people calling it a slur? Amazing return guest Perry Zurn joins me to discuss what the concept of cis does, why it’s
spreaker.com
Been seeing these around lately. Not sure who is housed here…
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.
Absolutely loved working with @ideasonfirephd.bsky.social for this book!
Ideas on Fire@ideasonfirephd.bsky.social · 3mo agoHats off to Ideas on Fire author Perry Zurn @perryzurn.bsky.social on the release of Cisgender: Disorienting a Category. 🥳 Cisgender is out now from @dukepress.bsky.social. dukeupress.edu/cisgender #IoFAuthors
"Cisgender, as a term, is young, barely 30 years old. What do you hope for its future?" Read my response in this interview with @dukepress.bsky.social! But I would also love to hear your response! dukeupress.wordpress.com/2026/07/07/q...
Q&A with Perry Zurn, Author of Cisgender, Disorienting a Category
Perry Zurn is Provost Associate Professor of Philosophy at American University. In his new book, Cisgender: Disorienting a Category, Zurn traces the story of how cis entered contemporary …
dukeupress.wordpress.com
Great to join the good folks at @hotelbarpodcast.bsky.social and chat about disorienting cisgender! Thanks @drleighmjohnson.bsky.social, Bob Vallier, and Jennifer Kling for a discussion I'm still chewing on! hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/cisg...
Episode 227: Disorienting Cisgender (with Perry Zurn) - Hotel Bar Podcast
The word everyone's fighting about has a history almost no one knows.
hotelbarpodcast.com
Today's blog post features our great new books coming out this July, including "Cisgender" by @perryzurn.bsky.social, the first book to trace the story of how cis entered contemporary gender lexicons. buff.ly/zs9RK2C
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.
Emi Koyama passed away last week. She was so excited to hear Cisgender was coming out. I interviewed her for it, given the significance of her 2002 uptake of the term. Thinking through race, gender, disability, & class, she had wise words for me to guide its future use. bsky.app/profile/emin...
emi koyama@eminism.org · 5mo ago“Cisgender: Disorienting History” by @perryzurn.bsky.social is finally (from the time I was interviewed about my previous writing on the topic) coming out in July! I’m so looking forward to it. www.dukeupress.edu/cisgender
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.
