A Hobart and William Smith Colleges professor is using theater, film and archival research to bring overlooked parts of transgender history to wider audiences.
Joshua Bastian Cole-Kurz, a visiting assistant professor of gender, sexuality and intersectional justice, recently contributed essays to two volumes of an anthology of plays by transgender writers.
Cole-Kurz wrote “Circling Time: Cercle Hermaphroditos and the Continuum of Trans History” for the second volume of The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays. The essay accompanies Shualee Cook's play “Cercle Hermaphroditos” and connects 19th-century archival evidence with contemporary theater.
The Cercle Hermaphroditos was founded in New York City in the 1890s and is believed to be among the earliest transgender advocacy and mutual-aid groups in the United States. Cole-Kurz discussed the organization and its historical context in an interview with LGBTQ Nation.
He also participated in a virtual launch for the anthology with co-editor Lindsey Mantoan. In June, he contributed an essay responding to a play about transgender athlete bans for a young-adult edition of the anthology.
At HWS, Cole-Kurz studies transgender representation in film, television and visual culture. He said recovering stories that were misidentified or excluded from historical narratives helps challenge the idea that transgender people are new or outside history.
Cole-Kurz brings that perspective into his courses, asking students to examine how media and historical narratives shape public understanding of identity, community and belonging.
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