Tourmaline’s work attends to the histories of disabled, poor, Black, queer, and trans elders in order to highlight the capacity of Black queer/trans social life to transform worlds. Her films create dreamlike portraits of gay and trans liberation icons, including Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera (Happy Birthday Marsha!, 2018) Mary Jones (Salacia, 2019), Miss Major (The Personal Things, 2016), and Egyptt LaBeija (Atlantic is a Sea of Bones, 2017).

This talk is part of the Spring 2020 focus of the Feminist Futures initiative, “Beyond the Bathroom Wars: What is the Future of Transgender Politics?,” and is co-sponsored with the Department of Black Studies.