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Dr. Megan Rivers-Moore, Associate Professor, Pauline Jewett Institute of Women’s & Gender Studies and Dr. Marie-Eve Carrier-Moisan, Associate Professor Department of Sociology & Anthropology.

When: March 3, 2020 6:30 p.m.
Where: Venus Envy, 226 Bank Street

FASSen your seatbelts, The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences is coming to CU in the City!
CU in the City is a popular series of talks that shares invigorating FASS research in communities across Ottawa and Canada. The next edition of CU in the City features Drs. Megan Rivers-Moore and Marie-Eve Carrier-Moisan.

What is “sex tourism”? Why do tourists and locals participate? What’s in it for them? What’s love got to do with it? And sex? What about money? And race?

In this joint conversation, Megan Rivers-Moore and Marie-Eve Carrier-Moisan will share stories from their research on sex tourism in Costa Rica and Brazil. They will explore some commonly held ideas about the buying and selling of sex while on vacation, and show that sex tourism is more complicated than what most people think and works out differently in different contexts and locations. By sharing stories and experiences from Brazil and Costa Rica, they hope to shed light on the complex issue of sex tourism.

Join Drs. Megan Rivers-Moore and Marie-Eve Carrier-Moisan on Tuesday March 3, 2020 for an engaging discussion on the complex issue issue of sex tourism.

Register

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The post Dr. Nadia Abu-Zahra appointed to the Joint Chair in Women’s Studies at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University and the University of Ottawa appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

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Professor in the Pauline Jewett Institute Of Women’s And Gender Studies, Dr. Megan Rivers-Moore has been awarded a for her project CompaĂąeras! Sex worker organizing in Latin America.  is a co-applicant on the project, and Dr. Laura MacDonald of ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´’s Department of Political Science is a collaborator.

CompaĂąeras! Sex worker organizing in Latin America

Focusing on the regional network Redtrasex (The Network of Latin American and Caribbean Sex Workers), this project will be the first to explore the role and impact of this regional network on local and national organizing in two country case studies. With the goal of building towards a larger comparative research agenda, this pilot project will focus on Redtrasex and its relationship with local organizations in Colombia and Nicaragua. This project will provide new insights into the varying ways in which sex workers in the region are organizing in the face of conflicting transnational policy trends. The research will offer new theoretical contributions to how we understand the role of the regional networks in working with national level organizations around labour struggles.

Read more about Dr. Rivers-Moore and her most recent publication, Gringo Gulch: Sex, Tourism, and Social Mobility in Costa Rica.

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Professor Dan Irving researches trans people and communities as they navigate the Canadian labour force

This past year, the Liberal Government led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introduced federal legislation aimed to secure human rights and legal protection for transgendered people in Canada. states that the Canadian Human Rights Act be altered to “add gender identity and gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination.” The Bill also amends the Criminal Code to increase protection against hate speech and propaganda targeting varied manifestations of gender identity.

It is important to note that this is the seventh time that a similarly worded bill has been introduced in Canada’s Parliament, the previous six attempts having been unsuccessful.

Although C-16 currently remains in the Senate, the speed in which it passed through the House of Commons should function as a symbolic step forward in Canada’s recognition of the profound issues faced by the Canadian community of lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender, queer/ questioning (LBGTQ) people.

This recent federal movement towards legislative equality has much to do with the authentic change affecting knowledge cultivated by researchers, activists, and scholars including Professor Dan Irving of the Human Rights and Sexuality Studies programs in the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies and the Pauline Jewett Institute, Women’s and Gender Studies.

Specifically, Professor Irving’s qualitative research focuses on transgender unemployment and underemployment in urban pockets across Canada. His current project, which will culminate in a forthcoming book, evaluates and decrypts the major issues, and the often dire realities that many trans people face while trying to obtain and maintain work.

Irving uses interviewing as a primary research tool to understand and reveal the ways that perceived conceptions of gender normativity influence those who are likely (and those who are not likely) to be recognized as employable in a service relation-based economy.

“For the book, I weave narratives of gender non-conformity and how these anecdotes relate to the modern-day workforce,” said Irving. “What I see again and again is the phenomenon of job ghettoization for trans people. That is to say, they are typically either struggling to obtain employment or being segregated and oppressed in the workforce.”

Irving goes on to explain that the “labour market depends so much on ideas of effective labour.”

“Workers are called upon to use their entire bodies and minds within a service relation-based economy— an economy geared to create positive feelings among clients and customers.”

“The ability to do this ‘effectively’ in the minds of employers, is based on notions of gender and sexuality normativity, whiteness and perceptions of ableness.”

“If you don’t meet these standards, you get classified as threatening, and thus ineffective, making, acquiring, and, or maintaining employment a particularly daunting task, regardless of your qualifications.”

Irving reminisced about one of his interviewees, an enthusiastic trans woman with a nursing degree who could not get a job. Although she possessed all the credentials and was passionate and ambitious, she was stuck in a loop of working entry-level positions. “It’s tragic. She crackled with energy and competency,” said Irving. “Like so many others, the fact that she couldn’t get work had a profound impact on her self-worth.”

Logging the underlying moral economy of this all, Irving further explainedthat employability is a lens through which many people deduce much of their personal sense of dignity. “Trans people lose jobs for reasons that have nothing to do with their skillsets.”

“Once this happens to a person a few times in their life, they no longer view themselves as employable and have no expectation of suitable employment. Their identity becomes ensnarled in this perception of not being good enough.” Of course, all of this leaves trans people with little choice but to acquire their money through criminalized activities—undertakings which tend to expedite disenfranchise – ment and marginalization.

When speaking with Irving, it is quickly evident that he realizes the moral component of his work. With this self-awareness, he explained that he operates as a research activist on two registers. “I always push for more work to get done and to make sure that it is sustainable. It is undeniably interdisciplinary research, and we have to understand that there are many factors in need of consideration. How do we mediate race, gender, class, and exploitation? What I’m studying can be tragic, and there are so many moving parts, so we need to generate reports that o ffer clear direction.”

“Second, we need to investigate the root of all marginalization. We need to force ourselves to confront the illusions fostered by capitalism.”

Professor Irving is a self-described Marxist, who became “politicized” in his late teens. As he transitioned in the early 2000s, Irving began to think a lot about questions surrounding the identity politics intrinsic to life as a trans person. Irving also nurtured his personal politicization by studying and deciphering how societal constructs shape our greater understanding of where we all fit. As might be expected, Irving had always yearned to be an agent of change. “I thought I’d be a lawyer, but after some university experience as an undergraduate (and total geek), I knew that academia was the profession I wanted to pursue.”

“At the time, I was witnessing this amazing galvanization in the trans community around identity, and I wanted to be an ally. So, I wrote my dissertation at York which focused on how organizations approach trans identity on three sites of political intervention—the union movement, feminist activism, specifically homeless and Violence Against Women shelters, and LGBT rights organizations.”

“Soon after I finished my Ph.D., I got a call from ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´â€”my first professional interview—and I was offered a professorship.”

In fact, Irving was ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University’s very first hire in the Sexuality Studies program. The irony of Irving’s rapid professional success is not lost on him. “You know, I feel like I have the best job in the world and recognize my personal privilege and influence, so I have to be cognizant and sensitive as I approach people who are less fortunate.”

As a trans person himself, Irving can share many of his own vulnerabilities with the community he studies, which he believes is essential. “I can relate to other’s fears, history, personal trials and issues through our shared identity. Typically, this gains me a degree of trust.”

“It also helps that I’ve been doing this for awhile, so I am something of a known entity in Ottawa and Toronto. I’ve always taken a very honest approach, and I think that my reputation often precedes me.”

Through his years of experience, Irving is still regularly surprised to learn of the resiliency of his interviewees. Although some trans people without work inevitably end up working in illicit (and often dangerous) trades, others establish alternative economies. Irving has met people who, in the absence of an employer, have created volunteer phone hotlines and embarked on careers as independent artists. Meanwhile, others embrace self-care through activities such as fitness, attending support meetings, and offering to counsel to others.

As he reflected on the hundreds of hours he’s spent interviewing members of trans communities, Professor Irving stated with conviction that “trans people are the storytellers of our society.”

“You meet these marginalized individuals who are often impoverished, dealing with mental health issues, and face obstacles most will never confront in their lifetime, and still, their spirit shines through.”

While the Canadian Government continues to debate Bill C-16, through his research, Irving and his interviewees give voice for the often unspoken and unspeakable feelings that particular bodies are worthless or worth less than others in the labour market—an exclusion that has a debilitating emotional impact on trans people and communities. To secure real societal change, Irving believes this effort needs to be collaborative.

“In my role as a trans scholar, I’m privileged in that I’ve been given access to spaces of privilege that many do not have. Although I’ve been granted access, I’m simply a bridge to trans community activists who lead the way forward despite the fact that they’re cast into social locations that are severely marginalized and compromised. They are the central figures in action on Bill C-16. These types of progressive movements forward are propelled by the tenacity and relentless pursuit of social justice taken on by trans community members.”

Professor Dan Irving’s forthcoming book, (Title TBA) will be released through Canadian Scholar’s Press. It is part of a three book series which Irving edits entitled “Studies in Trans* and Two Spirit Community Engagement”.

• A survey lead by Trans Pulse Project in 2010 disclosed that out of the almost 500 transgender respondents in Ontario, 20% reported having been physically or sexually assaulted, though not all of them reported the assaults to police.
• The respondent-driven sampling survey found 13% reported being fired and 18% refused a job because they were transgender.
• In 2016, about 299 trans deaths were recorded worldwide, including 23 in the United States. This is the second highest number since such records began in 2008.

Professor Dan Irving was a fall 2016 lecturer for FASS’ ongoing CU in the City series. His talk was titled Depressed Economies: Transgender Un/deremployment. Learn more about CU in the City.

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I had always considered myself a shy person, but not in a self-deprecating way.

“Emily is so shy, I wish she would contribute more in class,” was a remark regularly conveyed to my parents when they spoke with my high school teachers.

I accepted the label of being a “shy person” nonchalantly, but recently, I decided that it was time for a change.

When I received my acceptance to ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´’s Department of English, I told myself that I was going to make an effort to be a little less timid. I aspired to stand out and get involved as an undergraduate English student.

Don’t get me wrong; I was in various clubs and organizations in high school, but it wasn’t until I had decided on my major that I realized how passionately I wanted to be an outspoken contributor to the world of English.

As clichĂŠ as it sounds, I just wasn’t sure what to expect out of university as I arrived on campus for Frosh. During that week, I found myself surrounded by people galloping all around with their skin painted purple. As I listened to the loud, inconsistent repetition of air horns going off in the distance, I couldn’t imagine that, by the end of that week, I’d be “a university student.”  Although it was fun and easy to feel overwhelmed in these moments, I was relieved that things quickly managed to work themselves out.

In the first week of classes, I realized that ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ was the place for me, and as a writer, I was immediately inspired.

Not only was I introduced to the various Departmental clubs such as the English Literature Society and InWords, but I was surrounded by a whole team of people who would rather read the book than watch the movie.

Without even realizing it, my first week of classes flew by, and the idea that I was struggling with – the conception of myself as an actual “university student” began to seem plausible.  I wasn’t just attending lectures and dragging myself to the cafeteria; I was visiting the English Department and surfing the internet for writing submissions.

This was the experience that I had been craving while I was a shy high school student, so I quickly achieved a lot of personal ‘firsts.’ For example, I secured a writing role as a contributor to , an online platform that combined my two favourite things – eating and writing. I was fortunate enough to attend a event with my English professor who never let a class pass without enlightening me in some way. I went to my very first protest. I slipped away from the confines of my dorm room to study in the English Department lounge, which offers a view you won’t get anywhere else on campus.

Somewhere between exchanging daily stories in the Fresh Food Court with my roommate, and waking up engulfed in my weekly readings, I’ve come to a realization. As my professor would remind me, it may be something of a “Joycean Epiphany,” (who knew that James Joyce would jump out of my readings and into my reality so unexpectedly?) The realization is this: I am not the shy girl I had once believed I was. Or more specifically, I am, but I am not only her. I am an assortment of many things; a round character, not a flat one. I am the dynamic, not the static protagonist of my own story. I guess this is my way of mirroring Thoreau who “wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”

It has only been three months since I arrived in Ottawa and I’ve realized that I brought more highlighter markers than I’ll ever need. It has only been three months since I experienced firsthand what it feels like to really, really miss my mom.

And it has only been three months, and I can’t wait for more.

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by Nick Ward

The term “pura vida” is a colloquialism unique to Costa Rica.

The direct translation of pura vida is “pure life,” and it is meant to express a national ethos of eternal optimism. Costa Ricans use pura vida as a means to say hello, goodbye, thank you and you’re welcome – really, it is a sort of phrasing catch-all used for almost any situation. Pura vida is a persistent reminder that no matter the circumstances, life is beautiful and we’re all fortunate to be enjoying the ride. In fact, uttering pura vida is such a prevalent Costa Rican trait, that most would affirm that the adage is less of a slogan and more of a lifestyle.

This perception of Costa Rica as a laissez-faire, friendly, and optimistic nation certainly bolsters its conventional reputation as a picture-perfect tourist destination. Combine this dispositional repute with the country’s flush but traversable rain forest, its beautiful beaches on both the Pacific and Caribbean coastline, and its proximity to North America, and it is easy to understand Costa Rica’s magnetism. Unsurprisingly, the promise of the pure life and beautiful landscape attracts nearly three million cautiously-intrepid pasty-skinned, cargo short wearing tourists annually. Most of whom are quick (again unsurprisingly) to adopt and make liberal use of the aforementioned phrase “pura vida.”

With all that stated, it is important to remember that pura vida is a contextually pliable term.

In fact, for a significant portion of the many pasty-skinned tourists visiting Costa Rica each year, they are more likely to use the maxim to describe the country’s vibrant sex industry than to refer to the country’s beach culture.

[wide-image image=”21208″]

Photo Caption: Hotel Del Rey – The most popular sex tourism hotel in the Gringo Gulch neighbourhood.

In her newly released book, , Women’s and Gender Studies professor, Dr. Megan Rivers-Moore presents her extensive ethnographic research on the vast and complex sex industry that exists within the neighbourhood known as Gringo Gulch in Costa Rica’s capital city, San Jose.

“There are a lot of places in the world viewed as sex tourism hubs, but Costa Rica is unique for many reasons. For example, it’s proximity to the U.S. and the way the country has been marketed as safe, familiar, and affordable for travelers but also as “exotic” and different has made it especially appealing to many middle class and working class men from North America interested in participating in the sex industry,” said Rivers-Moore.

Professor Rivers-Moore attributes a number of factors to the booming market of sex tourism in Costa Rica. For one, the state does not regulate the exchange of money between sex worker and purchaser (though third party involvement such as managers or brothel administrators is illegal). While this lack of state intervention on the industry undeniably plays a massive role as to why sex tourists come to Costa Rica, Rivers-Moore’s research ascertains that, paramount to attracting sex migrants and tourists is the broad-minded social disposition towards the scene.

“From the perspective of the tourists, the state, and the sex-workers themselves, there exists an understanding as to why everybody is there and playing the role they are playing. Each of these players is profiting from the industry in one way or another, they are all using their participation to get ahead. And the stigma that surrounds sex-work in North America, particularly the turn toward criminalizing the sale of sex in many places, including in Canada most recently, is a major motivator for sex tourists who travel to Costa Rica. They are able to participate in the industry without risk of arrest and public shaming. Stigma for them isn’t a serious issue in Costa Rica, although it certainly is an issue for Costa Rican sex workers, who struggle to hide the source of their income from their families and communities.”

Rivers-Moore’s book actively challenges the narrative that most of us reflexively construct in our minds when presented with such a scenario – that the local sex workers of a Third World, Latin American country are being exploited and taken advantage of by privileged white, North American men.

Instead, Rivers Moore tells a more composite story of the Costa Rican sex tourism scene. “You quickly learn that we can’t presume to know what exactly is being bought and what is being sold. Often the exchanges have a lot more depth than the transaction of sex for money.”

“Many of the sex workers I interviewed articulated the idea that they viewed themselves also as care workers; believing they were providing a service to humbled white men who had run out of relationship options in their homeland. They took great pride in making these men feel good about themselves, and considered the caring aspects of their work (listening to men talk about their problems, making them feel attractive) was as important, if not more important, than the sex. Similarly, many of the men I met articulated that they view themselves as progressive and take a great deal of pride in treating the women they meet with respect in a culture they view as inherently misogynistic. This is a massive generalization about Costa Rican culture, of course, and one that is based on problematic assumptions and generalizations that are often pretty racist. But it’s significant that sex tourists want to think about themselves as enlightened and progressive, and some of them are well versed in feminism. Barry, a tourist from Virginia who took on a second job in order to fund periodic trips to Costa Rica, found it important to emphasize ‘I really appreciate them. I’m really glad they’re here, for me they’re a godsend. I’m sure lots of men treat them badly, but I make sure to be kind, to be respectful.’”

“Given the nature of sex tourism, there was a lot of talk from both sex workers and their clients about getting the ‘girlfriend experience,’ an experience that involves longer periods of time together, talking, listening, and sharing interests. This work involves quite a lot of skill, requiring patience, compassion, and empathy. For example, Virginia, a mother of two who attends secondary school at night, told me ‘some of them just look for company, they pay for company. I’m very happy to listen, as long as they pay. I’ll listen to it all. Cry, whatever, as long as you pay.’ It is so much more complicated than just sex.”

Rivers-Moore has a long standing academic relationship with Costa Rica. Prof. Rivers-Moore became interested in the country when she moved there after completing high school to spend a year learning Spanish and she was quickly enchanted with the nation’s considerable charm.

It was during this time in Costa Rica that she first noticed the prevalence of male tourists, but due to the subtle nature of the sex industry, it took her some time to recognize the dynamic at play. Once she understood what was occurring, she became fascinated, and focused much of her post-secondary education and early academic career on this phenomenon. Rivers-Moore completed her PhD at the and upon completion of her degree, she went on to work at the , where she continued her research on a more long term basis before accepting a job at .

This thorough Costa Rican research journey has ultimately led to the release of Gringo Gulch: Sex, Tourism, and Social Mobility in Costa Rica, an ethnographic work that analyzes and decodes the mosaic of race, gender, class, government, and human need and desire in our increasingly borderless world. For Gringo Gulch, Rivers-Moore spent over a year in San José’s sex tourism neighbourhood, interviewing tourists, actors of the state, and sex workers to achieve a vivid depiction of what being a player in this game is comprised of. The reader is introduced to a variety of characters from all sides who give their honest account as to why and/or how they participate in the Gringo Gulch scene, and what is taken away from it. “People sometimes assume that sex work is about villains and victims, and I think my work demonstrates that nothing could be further from the truth. It is so important to actually do empirical research and talk to people about their lives, because when we do, we find out that the sex industry is so many things simultaneously: it can be fun, it can be boring. Some people have harrowing experiences, and some find it utterly mundane. I really can’t emphasize enough how important it is to listen to people’s own interpretations of their lives and their experiences, without judgment.”

What Rivers-Moore is able to conclude from these characters is that most involved – the sex workers, the sex tourists and workers of the state – embrace the industry for their own sake, and use it to climb a social and/or monetary ladder that likely wouldn’t have been accessible to them without the existence of sex tourism.

By setting the scene in the culture of pura vida and telling us these distinctive stories of individuals (which are sometimes tragic, sometimes empowering and sometimes both), Gringo Gulch: Sex, Tourism, and Social Mobility in Costa Rica is an account of a nuanced social manifestation that helps us to understand the transnational ramifications of sex tourism. On an even broader scale, Gringo Gulch is the analysis of human beings making the most of their own disparate realities in a neoliberal state.

Professor Megan Rivers-Moore recently hosted an event at SAW Gallery to celebrate the publication of Gringo Gulch in collaboration with POWER (Prostitutes of Ottawa/Gatineau Work, Educate, and Resist) as a fundraiser for La Sala, Costa Rica’s sex workers’ rights organization. 

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Take an interesting class this summer!

WGST 1808 is an interdisciplinary course designed to familiarize students with key issues in Women’s and Gender Studies from a range of perspectives advanced by a variety of scholars. Students will consider traditional and emerging concepts and structures that influence gender and sexual identities, activities, and attitudes. In so doing, students will be encouraged to think about the complexities of diversity and the relations of power. An intersectional framework will guide our approach to the issues as related through academic discourses and experienced in everyday life.

In the first year course, Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies (WGST 1808), you will have the opportunity to discuss a wide range of issues such as:

• Body Image
• Media Representations of Gender, Sexuality and Race
• Gendered Violence
• Sexual Rights and Practices
• Gender and the New Economy
• Gender and Education
• Reproduction: Surrogacy, and “Designer Babies”
• Gender and Criminal Justice
• Gender and Health
• “The Lost Boys” – the Feminization of Universities
• Pay Inequality
• Feminisms
• Migration/Immigration and Transnationalism
• Stereotyping
• Activism

WGST 1808 is offered as a 1.0 credit full year course in the fall and winter terms OR as a 1.0 credit course in the full summer term.

Instructor:

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Note: Professor Laura Horak will host a screening and book party for Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema 1908-1934, at SAW Video Media Art Centre on April 8th.

Film Studies Professor Laura Horak begins her new book ‘Girls Will Be Boys’ with a richly detailed description of a scene from Morocco (1930), in which actress Marlene Dietrich takes the stage wearing a bowtie, top hat and tailcoat, then kisses a woman from the audience square on the mouth.

This iconic cinematic moment, alongside other bold performances by Greta Garbo and Katharine Hepburn, are what many have understood to be the earliest markers of cross-dressed women expressing desire for other women in American cinema.

According to Horak, our collective understanding of cross-dressed female performances pegs them as both ‘transgressive’ and a ‘challenge to the patriarchy and gender binary.’ But that only tells part of the story. By uncovering hundreds of performances by cross-dressed women onscreen from 1908 to the late 1920s, Horak not only shifts this history back to a much earlier date, but also points out that these performances began as wholesome representations of American ideals.

Horak’s research on the subject began over ten years ago, as an undergraduate student at Yale.

“I came across an incredible website called Jay Kaye’s Transgender Movie Site that listed thousands of films with transgender content. I was shocked by how many of them were made before 1950. Like many people, I had assumed that movies had only gotten more progressive, with more and more room for different kinds of gender expression. I was amazed at how modern a lot of the old movies were,” she says.

After a spring break spent at the Library of Congress tracking down and viewing hard-to-find America films, Horak says she was hooked. She had only just scratched the surface. To date, she has uncovered over 400 examples of films featuring cross-dressed women – a list which continues to grow.

“One of the things I wanted to show in my book is that a wide variety of female masculinities have been really important to American filmmaking in its earliest decades. This offers a kind of genealogy that might be politically, personally, and artistically useful to gender non-conforming people today, even if the female masculinities of the past were understood in very different terms than they are today.”

In Girls Will Be Boys, Horak is effectively the first to acknowledge that public perception of the earliest cross-dressed performances by women were reflective of pre-cinema trends in both theatre and folklore, and the ideal of genteel boyhood. For example, rather than casting a boy to play a boy, the innocence, beauty and vulnerability of a girl represented – ironically – a “better” boy.

Horak asserts that previous scholars tend to read cross-dressed performances as ‘mirrors of their own concerns and identities,’ be they feminist, lesbian, queer or post-modern. Conversely, she aims to focus in on how these films were perceived in their time, and offers up multiple, contradictory meanings mapped on to them over the years.

“It’s much more revealing to explore the meanings that various terms and gender styles had at the time and reconstruct that logic than to try to impose our own categories on them,” she says.

Often the only silent films people have seen are of the slapstick comedy variety. Celebrated performances by Charlie Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle might come to mind. Films featuring cross-dressed women, on the other hand, typically aren’t slapstick comedies. Even though many of the actresses are well-known to this day (like Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson), their cross-dressing films aren’t in circulation, and are hard to find.

“I hope that by listing all 476 American films featuring cross-dressed women between 1904 and 1934 in my appendix (including where to find the films that survive), I will spur further research on these forgotten works. I also hope that people start programming these films at film festivals, showing them in classes, and releasing them on DVD or via streaming sites,” says Horak. She also notes that there is much to be done on an international scale, not just with American films.

Part two of Horak’s book deals with the emergence of ‘lesbian legibility,’ wherein lesbian identities were introduced into mainstream American culture via cinema, beginning in the 1920s. While this caused some backlash against female masculinity and cross-dressing in film, there was also a positive aspect to this shift.

“It created new opportunities for community and identity formation for women who now had the option of identifying as lesbian. Although there are important differences, I think something similar has happened in the last ten years around the transgender community,” she says.

The horizon is bright for Horak in 2016. Among a book release for Girls Will Be Boys on April 8 at SAW Video, Horak has also co-organized an event for February 26 titled “Sexuality, Aesthetics, and Embodied Resistance: A Screening of Four Short Films,” one of which navigates the relationship between an Orthodox Jewish mother and her transgender son.

“Today, happily, more transgender and gender non-conforming people are able to tell their own stories and represent their experiences in everything from feature films to TV shows, experimental films, and YouTube videos. This is a welcome development and it’s wonderful that the long-burning transgender movement is finally bursting into mainstream consciousness,” she says.

Horak, cross-appointed with the Pauline Jewett Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies, teaches courses on film theory and historiography, passing and masquerade in cinema, sexuality in American cinema, women directors, queer Hollywood, and the body and visual technology.

Her next project- a book tentatively titled Cinema’s Oscar Wilde: Mauritz Stiller and the Production of Modern Sexuality is about Finnish-Swedish filmmaker Mauritz Stiller, who is most famous today for discovering Greta Garbo and going to Hollywood with her. However, he also directed almost 40 films, and was fairly well-known in Sweden for being both gay and Jewish. According to Horak, this book will investigate Stiller’s role in the enormous social changes around sexuality and gender in Northern Europe in the early twentieth century.

“In some sense, I’m asking similar questions about the relationship between cinema, popular culture, gender, and sexuality as I did in Girls Will Be Boys, but asking them about a different set of films in a different geopolitical context.”

The April 8th Screening and Book Party (7:00 pm at the SAW Video Media Art Centre, 67 Nicholas Street, Ottawa) celebrating Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema 1908-1934, will feature Silent films with live musical accompaniment!

Including:

• Darling of the C.S.A. (1912) – Newly restored!
• The House with Closed Shutters (1910)
• The Two Roses (1910) – Starring the “Thanhouser Kid” (on book cover)
• A Lively Affair (1914)
• What’s the World Coming To? (1926) – Newly restored!

Books for sale at 30% off!

Presented with support from SAW Video Media Art Centre and ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University’s School for Studies in Art and Culture (SSAC) and Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS).

Wheelchair accessible entrance located at 2 Daly Avenue before the taxi stand.

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