Transparent Symposium Program
Download the program here
All events will take place in Rush Rhees Library at the 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳, except for the screening on Thursday, which will take place at the . Events are free and open to the public. Please be in touch with sbai@rochester.edu with questions about accessibility of these events. Transparent: A Multi-Disciplinary Symposium is cosponsored by: American Studies, Film & Media Studies, English, Jewish Studies, Modern Languages & Cultures, Religion & Classics, and the Humanities Project, a program of the Humanities Center.
Wednesday, November 30th
6:30 pm Eileen Myles Reading
With renowned poet, novelist, performer, and art journalist, followed by book signing and reception.
Thursday, December 1st
9:15 am Opening Remarks
Nora Rubel, Associate Professor of Religion and Classics & Director of the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳
9:30 am - 11:30 am Genealogies and Histories
Chair: Jennifer Creech, Associate Professor of German, Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳
- Lauren Herold (Northwestern University), “What is the Female Gaze?: A Historical and Critical Look at Feminist Film Theory and Jill Soloway's Transparent”
- Oliver Leaman (University of Kentucky), “Eileen Myles, Community and the Modern Jewish Family”
- Joshua Falek (McGill University), “Cracking the Mauratorium: How Transparent’s Queer Temporality Exposes Jewish Intergenerational Trauma”
Respondent: Joshua Dubler, Assistant Professor of Religion, Department of Religion and Classics, 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳
1:30 pm - 3:15 pm Jewish or Jew-ish?
Chair: Nora Rubel, Associate Professor of Religion and Classics & Director of the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳
- Max Bledstein (University of Winnipeg), “Eating Identity: Gender, Religion, and Food in Transparent”
- Jodi Eichler-Levine (Lehigh University), “Dancing Out the Torah: Bodies, Ritual and Transitions in Transparent”
- Sara Feldman (University of Illinois), “Transparent’s Failed White Lesbian Wedding and the New Jewish-Protestant Relations”
- Ranen Omer-Sherman (University of Louisville), “Levinasian Nomadism and the Unmoored Characters of Transparent”
Respondent: Lesleigh Cushing, Murray W. and Mildred K. Finard Associate Professor in Jewish Studies and Associate Professor of Religion & Director Jewish Studies Program, Colgate University
4:00 pm - 5:45 pm Space, Movement, and the American West
Chair: Joan Saab, Associate Professor of Art History & Chair of the Department of Art and Art History, 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳
- Shari Rabin (College of Charleston), "Women Rabbis in Gilded Ages: From Rachel Frank to Rabbi Raquel"
- Samira Mehta (Albright College), “The Water that Transforms: Swimming Pool as Secular, California Mikveh in Jill Soloway's Transparent”
- Erin Kasimow (University of Southern California), “Lost and Found in La La Land”
Respondent: Ezra Tawil, Associate Professor of English, Department of English, 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm Transparent Screening and Q&A at The Little Theatre with
with Zackary Drucker (Producer, Transparent)
Rabbi Susan Goldberg (Consultant, Transparent)
Alexandra Grey (Actor, Transparent)
Tickets are free and offered on a first-come, first-served basis on the night of the screening and discussion which will be held in Theater 1 at The Little Theatre, 240 East Ave, 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳, NY 14604 If you have questions or concerns about this, please be in touch with sbai@rochester.edu.
Friday, December 2nd
9:30 am - 11:30 am Gendering the Holocaust
Chair: Jason Middleton, Associate Professor of English, Department of English & Director of the Program in Film and Media Studies, 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳
- Diane Klein (University of La Verne College of Law) and Bashir Naim (Actor, Transparent), “Troubling the Natal Family”
- Kerstin Steitz (Old Dominion University), “Jewishness, the Holocaust, and Transgender in Transparent”
- David Slucki (College of Charleston), “Whose Holocaust? Gender, Jewishness and Transparent”
Respondent: Jason Peck, Visiting Assistant Professor of German, Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳
1:30 pm - 3:15 pm Interrogating the Revolutionary
Chair: Joel Burges, Assistant Professor of English, Department of English, 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳
- Ceridwen Troy, "The Cis Gaze, or Why I Do Not Watch Transparent"
- Thomas McCarthy (SUNY Geneseo), “Class Act: Transparent and Economic Privilege”
- Kate Royal (Northwestern University), “Television as a Safe Space: Content and Community in Transparent”
Respondent: Alice Rutkowski (SUNY Geneseo)
4:00 pm - 5:45 pm Shifting Selves and Shifting Boundaries
Chair: Rachel Haidu, Associate Professor of Art History, Department of Art and Art History & Chair of the Program in Visual and Cultural Studies
- Elliot Ratzman (Swarthmore College), “Transparent without Transcendence: The Undisciplined Secular Subject, Moral Failure and the Ethics of the Self in the Family Pfefferman”
- Nicole Erin Morse (University of Chicago), “The Look Back: Subverting the Medicalization and Objectification of the Trans Body in Transparent"
- Lisa Grunberger (Temple University), “Transparent's Pfeffermans: Bearing the Cross of the Ivri”