Jamey Jesperson faces the uphill battle for visibility navigating academia as a trans woman studying anti-colonial histories. Her journey highlights the challenge in platforming and amplifying voices both like and unlike hers—critical in conveying the realities of trans histories.
Jesperson's dissertation stems from a challenge—and invitation—by Saylesh Wesley, a Stó:lō Two-Spirit Knowledge Keeper. Known as a leader of Two-Spirit resurgence, Wesley entrusted Jesperson with her oral history in the summer of 2022, now archived at the Stó:lō Library & Archives.
Jesperson's studies at The New School in New York, where she learned and organized with queer Indigenous-led collectives as a settler scholar, deeply influence her research at UVic, grounding her work in a commitment to anti-colonial politics. As she begins her research for her dissertation project, titled "A Trans Indigenous History of the Pacific Northwest," her goal is to re-story colonial narratives of contact between settlers and trans Indigenous people in the early colonial period, 1774-1857.
Central to her research is pushing back against damage-centred narratives of trans Indigenous pasts. Collaborating with Wesley and mentor Tłaliłila’ogwa, Dr. Sarah Hunt, Jesperson aims to revive silenced and often violent histories, focusing instead on stories of trans Indigenous autonomy, resistance, and survivance across the centuries.
Trained as an ethnohistorian, Jesperson specializes in dissecting colonial archives, extracting stories from sparse references. She describes this method as "looking for glimpses and glimmers," referring to uncovering a sentence about an historical trans person and building their narrative from context.
The Vanier scholarship holds profound significance for Jesperson, serving as a vital resource for her research aspirations as a trans woman in academia.
https://www.uvic.ca/...-jesperson news
Edited by Victoria Watcher, 10 March 2024 - 04:55 AM.