SOU faculty members co-author book on transgender experiences

(Ashland, Ore.) — SOU’s Carey Jean Sojka and Kylan Mattias de Vries – both faculty members in the Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Program, and both previous recipients of the university’s Distinguished Teaching Award – have co-authored a new book about the identity experiences of transgender people.

The book, “Transgender Intersections: Race and Gender through Identities, Interactions and Systems of Power,” was published last month by Polity Books, an international publisher in the social sciences and humanities – often on topics with general readership and that draw media discussion. The company has offices in Cambridge and Oxford in the U.K., and in Boston and New York in the U.S.

“While transgender lives are at the forefront of contemporary politics, what do we really understand about the complexity of trans experience?” the publisher asks on the new book’s webpage. “Trans people who go through various aspects of gender transition experience shifts not only in their gender, but also with regards to other categories of identity such as race, social class, sexuality, disability and more.

“Centering the stories of trans people and their loved ones, Sojka and de Vries investigate how intersectionality operates at various levels of social meaning – the individual, the interpersonal and the structural – in the experiences of transgender people.”

Reviews of the book say it effectively captures the breadth of trans experiences and social connections through the stories it shares of transgender people and their loved ones.

“In a time of hostile stereotyping of trans groups by right-wing politicians and media, it is refreshing to meet the reality, clearly presented: complex lives, shaped by the whole spectrum of differences and relations of power across the contemporary USA,” Raewyn Connell of the University of Sydney said in an online review.

Sojka is an associate professor whose research and teaching interests include transgender studies, embodiment, gender, sexuality, race, disability and fat studies. She conducts community trainings on LGBTQ issues in southern Oregon. Sojka earned bachelor’s degrees from Luther College in Women & Gender Studies and Sociology. Her master’s degree in Women’s Studies and doctorate in Sociology are from State University of New York at Albany.

de Vries is a professor with a joint appointment in the GSWS and Sociology & Anthropology programs at SOU. His academic interests include inequalities, transgender studies and social psychology. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Communication at Antioch University Santa Barbara, and a master’s degree and doctorate in Sociology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

Sojka received SOU’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2020, and de Vries received the award in 2017. Sojka and de Vries co-chair SOU’s Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Program.

-SOU-