Trans Bodies, Trans Selves

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Advisors, Organizers, and Interns

 

ADVISORS
   

 

Katherine Rachlin, Ph.D. (Kit) is a clinical psychologist and gender specialist in private practice in New York City.  In addition to her work as a therapist, she also conducts trainings on transgender issue, provides supervision for psychotherapists, and provides expert testimony for transgender civil rights cases.  She is a past board member of FTM International, was a member of the American Psychological Association Taskforce on Gender Identity, Gender Variance, and Intersex Conditions, and is a current board member of The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), and a current member of the committee to revise the WPATH Standards of Care.  Some of her research papers explore the Flexible Use of the Standards of Care; the DSM Diagnosis GID NOS, Transgender Individuals' Experiences of Psychotherapy; Female-to-Male Individuals’ Access to Health Care; Female-to-Male Individuals’ experience of hysterectomy and oophorectomy, and Factors which influence FTM surgical decisions.

 
   

Ami B. Kaplan, LCSW is a psychotherapist in New York City.  She has a B.S. in Computer Science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and an  M.S.W. from New York University.  Her Psychoanalytic training was done at the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center in New York. Her work has centered on Gay, Lesbian and Transgendered individuals.  She has been active as a supervisor, lecturer, consultant and clinician with several New York City agencies involved in serving the LGBT community; particularly in those affected by HIV/AIDS.  These agencies include ‘Body Positive’, GMHC (Gay Men’s Health Crisis), The Bedford Stuyvesant Community Mental Health Center HIV unit, PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) and the New York City HIV Prevention Planning Group.  Ami has been a Lecturer at the NYU School of Social Work.  Her current clinical work has focused on transgendered individuals.   She is currently a member of the Policy and Procedures Committee of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.  She maintains a blog on issues of Transgender Mental Health at http://tgmentalhealth.com/.

   

Cris Beam is the author of Transparent: Love, Family and Living the T with Transgender TeenagersI Am J,  is a young adult novel slated for release in March 2011 from Little, Brown, about a transgender runaway in New York City. Cris regularly presents on issues of gender at universities and conferences both nationally and internationally and, as the proud foster parent to a transgender daughter, is especially excited about books like (Harcourt, 2007) which won a Lambda Literary Award and was a Stonewall Honor Book. This book covers seven years in the lives of four transgender street kids. Her second book, Trans Bodies, Trans Selves.

  Sel J. Hwahng, Ph. D. is currently a Visiting Scholar and Adjunct Professor at the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University, and was a Research Investigator on the National Institute on Drug Abuse - funded New York Transgender Project at the Institute of Treatment and Services Research, National Development and Research Institutes, Inc, from 2004-09. Sel has received an Independent Research Investigator Development Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a National Institutes of Health Loan Repayment Program Award for Health Disparities Research, an Excellence in Abstract Submission among All Presenters Award from the American Public Health Association (HIV/AIDS Section), an International scholarship from the International AIDS Society, and a National Institutes of Health National Service Research Award and Postdoctoral Training Fellowship in Drug Abuse Research. Publications include over 17 articles and book chapters in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes on various aspects of research on health disparities, HIV/STIs, substance use, mental health, abuse/victimization, child/adolescent development, and mass sexual violence during armed conflicts focusing mostly on LGBTQ, women, and/or people of color populations. Sel has also consulted on a resource guide on HIV prevention among transfeminine people, and serves on the National Advisory Board for the Center of Excellence for Transgender Health, University of California at San Francisco.
  Imani Henry, an activist, writer, and performer, has been a Staff Organizer at the International Action Center (IAC) since 1993.  As a staff member of The Audre Lorde Project, Imani was the first program coordinator of TransJustice, the 1st political group of NYC created by and for Trans and Gender Non-Conforming people of color. He also serves as the administrator for two national lists for Trans and Gender Non-Conforming people of Color – TGPOC and TPOCX. Since 1992, Imani has been a trainer and consultant, contracted by not-for-profit and private corporations.   Imani has developed and facilitated cultural competency trainings, Harm Reduction/HIV-related and organizational planning strategies. From 2002-2007 toured with his multi-media theatre performance, B4T (before testosterone), at colleges, conferences and theatres across the US and Canada. His writing has appeared in several publications including the lambda award winning Does Your Mama Know (Red Bone Press) and Voices Rising: Celebrating 20 years of Black LGBT Writing (Other Countries 2007) and Marxism, Reparations and the Black Freedom Struggle, (World View Forum Publishing). Imani is also a journalist for the progressive weekly, Workers' World newspaper.  Currently, Imani Henry is in a dual degree Masters program, at New York University.
 

Joe Ippolito is a Doctor of Psychology and a licensed clinical social worker. Joe currently helps run an Intentive Outpatient Program at Abington Memorial Hospital, has a small private therapy practice in Center City Philadelphia, where he works mostly with LGBTQ clients, and teaches in the Masters of Counseling Program at Chestnut Hill College. In addition to the clinical and academic work he does, Joe is a researcher, educator, activist and organizer. For the past 8 years, Joe served as Program Coordinator (from 2006-2008) and as an Organizer (from 2003 to present) for the Philadlephia Trans-Health Conference. He is also a board member for Philadelphia Family Pride, an organization that works with LGGBTQ families, and is in the process of develping, Gender Reel, a multi-media gender non-conforming, gender variant, transgender festival scheduled to take place in Philadelphia on 9/10/11. Additionally, Joe is in the process of gearing up to film his first documentary, which looks at aging issues in the transgender community. Over the years, Joe has presented information about transgender issues at various professional and community driven conferences, and has consulted with local, regional and national organizations and agencies about such issues.
  Miss Major is a black, formerly incarcerated, male-to-female transgender elder. She has been an activist and advocate in her community for over forty years, mentoring and empowering many of today’s transgender leaders to stand tall, step into their own power, and defend their human rights, from coast to coast.  Miss Major was at the Stonewall uprisings in ’69, and became politicized in the aftermath at Attica, has worked at HIV/AIDS organizations throughout California, was an original member of the first all-transgender gospel choir and is a father, mother, grandmother, and grandfather to her own children and to many in the transgender community. She has given speeches and trainings to audiences of transgender and non-transgender people and has received numerous awards for her work.  In 2008, she testified at the CERD committee to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland about the abuses of transgender women of color in and out of the Prison Industrial Complex here in the US. Currently, Miss Major is the Executive Director of the TGI Justice Project where she instills hope and a belief in a better future to the girls that are currently incarcerated and those coming home.
  Ilana Sherer, MD is a pediatrician practicing in San Francisco, CA whose professional interests include improving the delivery of primary care for children with special health care needs, gender variant children, and immigrants, as well as using written medical narratives to advocate for policy change.  She will be a 2011 graduate of the UCSF Pediatric Leadership for the Underserved (PLUS) Residency Program, where she is working with a network of professionals from diverse disciplines to create BayGap: the Bay Area Youth Gender Acceptance Project, a comprehensive clinic without walls for gender variant children, youth, and families.  Her personal vision is to educate her pediatrician colleagues to recognize and address gender variance in early childhood and to support families and communities in creating accepting environments for their children throughout childhood and early adulthood.  Originally from the Allentown, PA, she received her undergraduate degree from Brown University and her MD from University of Pennsylvania in 2003, and worked in public health increasing access to care for the uninsured before entering the medical field.  After work, she can be found on stage performing as a klezmer violinist, riding her road bike down the California coast, or writing.
  Andrea James is author of Transsexual Road Map, one of the oldest and largest websites devoted to practical aspects of transition. She co-founded Deep Stealth Productions and has consulted on, produced and directed trans-themed theater, film, and television, including the first all-transgender Vagina Monologues, the film Transamerica, and a range of instructional videos and short films by and about trans people. She serves on the Board of Directors for TransYouth Family Allies, Outfest, and GenderMedia Foundation.
  When Tara DeWit first met Dr. Laura Erickson-Schroth and Rob Williams at the Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference, she was immediately impressed by their energy and expertise. Tara is honored to be a part of this exciting and much needed book, Trans Bodies, Trans Selves.  As a clinical psychologist in private practice in the West Village neighborhood of NYC, she frequently works with queer identified and transgender individuals and with non-traditional couples. 
  Paisley Currah is a professor of political science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. His current book project, The United States of Sex: Regulating Transgender looks at contradictions in state definitions of sex. He is co-editor of Corpus: An Interdisciplinary Reader on Bodies and Knowledge (Palgrave, 2011) and Transgender Rights (Minnesota, 2006). Recent articles include, “‘We Won’t Know Who You Are’: Contesting Sex Designations on New York City Birth Certificates,” co-authored with Lisa Jean Moore (Hypatia 2009) and “The Transgender Rights Imaginary,” in Feminist and Queer Legal Theory: Intimate Encounters, Uncomfortable Conversations (Ashgate Press 2009). He is a founder and board member of the Transgender Law and Policy Institute and served as the executive director of the Center for Lesbian Gay Studies from 2003-2007.
  Regina A. Scheel, MSW is a Psychotherapist, Clinical Social Worker, and Chemical Dependency Counselor specializing in working with adults with various life challenges. She works both in private practice and as a therapist and clinical supervisor in a psychiatric hospital. Her approach is client-centered, strength perspective, and she works to create a therapeutic relationship in which the client(s) can discover and take actions appropriate to improve functioning in one’s life. She has a Masters Degree in Social Work from the University of Washington. She is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker, a Mental Health Professional, and is certified as a Chemical Dependency Professional. She has  been involved with the LGBT community, specifically the transgender community, since 2001. Regina has lived in the Seattle area my entire life and enjoys reading, camping, snow skiing, dancing, and physical fitness. She is a post-op transsexual and love living my life with my mind, spirit, and body in congruence. www.reginaascheel.com
  Arlene (Ari) Istar Lev LCSW-R, CASAC, is a social worker, family therapist, educator, and writer whose work addresses the unique therapeutic needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. She is the Founder and Clinical Director of Choices Counseling and Consulting and The Institute for Gender, Relationships, Identity, and Sexuality (TIGRIS), a post-graduate training program in Albany, New York. Arlene is a lecturer at the State University New York at Albany, School of Social Welfare and Empire College. Additionally, she is the Clinical Supervisor for Center Support: Counseling Services, a low-cost therapy program at the Capital District Gay and Lesbian Community Council.  Arlene has authored two books: The Complete Lesbian and Gay Parenting Guide and Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and their Families, winner of the American Psychological Association (Division 44) Distinguished Book Award, 2006.  Her writing is available on her website:  www.choicesconsulting.com.
   

Riki Wilchins is the founding head of the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition (GenderPAC), the national gender rights organization, and Transexual Menace, a street action gorup. The author of "Read My Lips," "GenderQueer," and "Queer Theory/Gender Theory," Riki’s work has been profile in The New York Times, and in 2001 TIME Magazine selected her as one of "100 Civic Innovators for the 21st Century." Her new transgender stand-up comedy act, “The MANgina Monologues: A One Trans Show” is at www.onetransshow.com
  Tey Meadow is a recovering lawyer and doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at New York University. Her work spans issues related to sexuality and gender in law, medicine and society. She is currently at work on a book about families with gender variant and transgender children. Tey also works to create supportive programming and social networking opportunities for gender variant and trans teens in New York City and across the country. When she’s not writing or teaching, she can typically be found hanging out with her dogs in Brooklyn.
   

M. Dru Levasseur is the Transgender Rights Attorney for Lambda Legal, the oldest and largest national legal organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of LGBT people and people with HIV. Levasseur focuses his work on impact litigation, advocacy and community education to advance the civil rights of transgender people nationwide. Before joining Lambda Legal, Levasseur was staff attorney for Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund. In 2007, he co-founded the Jim Collins Foundation, a nonprofit that raises money to fund gender-confirming surgeries.
 

Jeanne Vaccaro is a Ph.D. candidate in Performance Studies at NYU. Her dissertation, “Felt Matters: Crafting ‘Transgender’ and the Politics of the Handmade Body,” is an interdisciplinary exploration of transgender embodiment and queer craft. Jeanne earned a B.A. in Women’s Studies at Smith College and has taught feminist, queer and trans theory in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University and at NYU. She serves on the Editorial Collective of Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory and is also a contributing writer at The Feminist Review. Jeanne lives in Brooklyn, NY.
  Diane and Jacob Anderson-Minshall are journalists, award-winning

authors, and environmental and LGBT activists. Now married 20 years,

they've survived four presidents, several cross country moves and one

big gender transition. The two co-authored the Blind Eye mystery

series (Blind Leap, Blind Faith and Blind Curves), and Diane also

authored the erotic thriller, Punishment With Kisses. Jacob wrote the

long-running column, "TransNation," which appeared in LGBT newspapers

nationwide and was producer and co-anchor of Gender Blender on KBOO FM

radio. Diane was the long-time editor in chief of Curve magazine, and

the co-founder and former editor of Alice magazine and Girlfriends

Magazine. In addition to parenting a transgender foster child, the two

have been active in educating the public about transgender issues.

They're upcoming memoir, Queerly Beloved, due out in 2012, talks about

their transition from two 22-year old baby dykes to a "straight"

married couple in their 40s.
  Kellan Baker is the Senior Policy Associate at the National Coalition for LGBT Health, where he develops and implements the Coalition's broad range of LGBT health policy efforts. His work includes fighting for LGBT inclusion in healthcare reform, enhancing LGBT indicators in federal public health initiatives like Healthy People 2020, improving federal and state data collection on LGBT health and health disparities, and pursuing advocacy with federal policymakers. Prior to joining the Coalition, he spent several years in Moscow, Russia, where he co-founded a group that advocates for quality healthcare for transgender people in the former Soviet Union and worked with Special Olympics Russia. He spent the summer of 2009 on break from the Coalition in the White House, where he interned for the Special Assistant to the President for Disability Policy. In addition to his work for the Coalition, Kellan is a board member of the DC LGBT Community Center and helped achieve marriage equality in DC as co-chair of DC for Marriage. Kellan is pursuing dual Masters Degrees (MPH/MA) in Global Public Health Policy and International Development at George Washington University, where he is a member of the Delta Omega Public Health Honors Society. He graduated from Swarthmore College with high honors in astrophysics and Russian.
   sj Miller is Associate Professor of Secondary English Education and Director of the Master of Arts in Teaching English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. sj earned a B.A. from U.C. Berkeley, an M.A. from the Hebrew Union College and a PhD from the University of New Mexico and taught both and high school English in the Santa Fe public schools for ten years working with suburban, immigrant and Native American youth. sj has published widely in journals and presented widely in state and national conferences on a variety of topics related to teaching young adult literature, multimodal applications of popular culture in secondary classrooms, innovative research methodologies, and matrixing English teacher identity in spacetime. Most notably, sj won the 2005 Article of the Year Award from the English Journal for “Shattering Images of Violence in Young Adult Literature: Strategies for the Classroom.” sj co-authored Unpacking the Loaded Teacher Matrix: Negotiating Space and Time Between University and Secondary English Classrooms which received the Richard A. Meade award from NCTE and co-authored Narratives of Social Justice Teaching: How English Teachers Negotiate Theory and Practice Between Preservice and Inservice Spaces. sj is the co-chair of the CEE (Conference on English Education) committee for Social Justice, the co-president for NCTEAR (National Council Teachers of English Research Assembly), and is a consultant for the College Board, AP Grant Mentor, providing best practices to secondary Pre- and Advanced Placement English teachers. Most recently, sj helped draft the Beliefs Statement related to Social Justice in English education at the CEE policy summit. Current research interests are in unpacking how social justice manifests in preservice English teacher identity as teachers experience the larger matrix of the teaching world. A co-authored book entitled Change Matters: Critical Essays on Moving Social Justice Theory into Policy is hot off of the presses.

ORGANIZERS

Arthur Robinson Williams (Rob), M.A. is a medical student and documentary photographer whose work, My Right Self, stories and photographs exploring issues of identity, perception, and the body, was supported by an Open Society Institute Documentary Photography Project Grant. Rob has formerly completed projects on drugs and addiction in the United States, HIV/AIDS in Ghana, homosexuality in the Netherlands, the Cuban health system, anthroposophical farming communes in the Northeast and injection drug use in New Jersey. Rob graduated from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs where he focused on domestic health policy. He is currently a fourth-year medical student studying ethics and the arts and medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Center for Bioethics. He is beginning a residency in psychiatry.
  Dena Simmons, (MSEd), is a doctoral student in Health Education at Columbia University, Teachers College. Her research centers around health disparities.  She has varied research interests, including the experiences of trans people of color in the healthcare system, the health risks associated with performing masculinity in the school setting, and the effects of educational policy on the health of the nation’s children. She has served as a public health volunteer in Antigua, where she worked with the Directorate of Gender Affairs to provide better health services for Dominican sex workers.  Dena has also studied the collaboration between schools and health agencies in efforts to prevent teenage pregnancy with a Fulbright Scholarship in the Dominican Republic.  Before her doctoral studies, Dena was a middle school teacher in her hometown, the Bronx, New York.  Her goal is to work toward making schools and hospitals safer, inclusive, and healthy environments for all.
 

Jonah A. Siegel, M.S.W., is a doctoral student in the Social Work and Sociology program at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Jonah's research focuses broadly on deviance and punishment, the spatial distribution of crime, felon disenfranchisement, and poverty and social welfare policy. Specifically, he is interested in studying the local effects of mass imprisonment in communities with high rates of incarceration. Jonah has devoted time and energy to queer rights issues since his college years; these concerns remain at the forefront of his work both professionally and avocationally.
INTERNS 
  Cael Keegan holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University at Buffalo. He is a lecturer in the Women and Gender Studies Departments at San Francisco State University and Sonoma State University, where he teaches classes on American history and politics, gender studies, and queer and transgender theories. Keegan has also written and spoken extensively on the representation of queer and transgender identities in mainstream American media. His dissertation, "Queer Melodramatics: The Feeling Body and the American Democratic Imagination," was a finalist for the 2010 Ralph Henry Gabriel Dissertation Prize in American Studies. Keegan’s work has previously appeared in NeoAmericanist, The Journal of Lesbian Studies, and in Challenging Lesbian Norms. His current research examines the affective construction of the transgender body in American popular culture.
   Zeraph Moore is a transgender student in the field of ecology with a passionate interest in being of service to other transgender and genderqueer people. He is the editor of a yearly journal of queer possibility, The Alchemical Postmodern Theorist, as well as an artist exploring androgynous and ambigender themes. He is excited to be participating in the Trans Bodies Trans Selves book as a survey intern, and hopes that this book will open doors for transgender understanding in many fields.
  Heather Palmer is a sociology student at American University. She has worked on the executive committee of the Philadelphia Trans Health Conference and is now at the American Unviersity GLBTA Resource Center as their Publications and Social Meda Outreach Coordinator. She is very happy to be Trans Bodies, Trans Selves' publicity intern.
  Pau Crego Walters is a queer dandy who currently resides in San Francisco while working towards becoming a wiser trans scholar and activist. Pau was an organizer for the first march for the declassification of trans identities in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) in Barcelona, Spain, in 2007. He has also been doing outreach, workshops, performances and writing about trans and intersex issues for the past 5 years. He is thrilled to be a survey intern for Trans Bodies, Trans Selves, and has high hopes for the helpful resources that this book will provide for present and future (trans)generations.
   
Christian is a law student in the New England area.  He has served as both a student representative and vice-president of his on-campus, GLBTQ alliance, OUTlaw.  He is also a member of the MLGBA Trans Inclusion Committee and recently externed for MTPC, researching areas of law pertaining to transgender prisoners in America.  He is very excited to serve as the student intern for Trans Bodies Trans Selves legal chapter.
   

Jack Hixson-Vulpe is a graduate student at the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. His identity is never static, but he can feel comfortable with the words queer and trans. His current theoretical work focuses on notions of queer futurity. He has been involved with community-based organizations for 10 years, starting as a workshop facilitator for T.E.A.C.H (Teens Educating and Confronting Homophobia). He has worked for the past 6 years organizing events and conferences, including the 4th annual Canadian Universities Queer Services Conference. He hopes to work on issues which will look at community healthcare, policy, trans issues and access to abortions. Jack is incredibly excited to work on Trans Bodies, Trans Selves and as a publicity intern. 
   

Anna Kirey is a queer graduate student at University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill studying Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies. Anna has been an activist for over a decade and co-founded an LGBT NGO named Labrys in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan in 2004. Anna has a Bachelor's degree in Journalism with minor in International Comparative Politics and Master's in Gender and Peace Building. Anna is torn between studies and international queer activism, the latter seems to win too often. Currently Anna is a representative of Central Asia in ILGA-Asia board, Advisor to Global Fund for Women. In addition, Anna collected information about transgender people's legal situation in 81 countries for ILGA World's Trans Mapping project. This task helps Anna to support Trans Bodies, Trans Selves as the 'Gender around the world' chapter intern.