This photo was taken for a Tucson Weekly story about the trans studies initiative at University of Arizona. The backdrop is the courtyard of the Gender & Women’s Studies building.

Susan Stryker, who received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and completed her postdoctoral research at Stanford, is a pioneer in the field of transgender studies. Before her appointment at Mills, Professor Stryker held appointments at Harvard, Yale, University of California, Santa Cruz, and Simon Fraser University. Susan Stryker is Professor Emerita of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona, and Barbara Lee Distinguished Chair in Women’s Leadership at Mills College. According to Inside Higher Ed, she is “a driving force” in expanding academic programs and faculty hiring for transgender studies.

Also a longtime award-winning activist, author, and filmmaker, Professor Stryker is co-founder of direct-action activist group, Transgender Nation, and executive director of San Francisco’s GLBT Historical Society, 1999-2003. She is co-founder of the TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, the first academic journal in the humanities and social sciences devoted to exploring transgender issues through an expressly interdisciplinary lens. Prior to this, Professor Stryker was among the first openly transgender authors to ever publish an academic article in a peer-reviewed journal.

Read the Interview at Rough Cut Press