Chris Straayer

Chris Straayer’s research is interdisciplinary, combining cinema, queer, and trans studies with interests in science, social science, art, and cultural studies.  Issues of identity function and dissolution have remained central in a wide range of sites and concerns, from video art to film noir, feminist theory to explicit sexual imagery.  His current research projects are: structures of passing, gender and madness, and trans* physicalities.

Straayer is author of Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies (Columbia University Press). His chapters in anthologies include: "The Talented Post-structuralist: Hetero-masculinity, Gay Artifice, and Class Passing" in Peter Lehman (ed.), Masculinity: Bodies, Movies, Culture; "Femme Fatale or Lesbian Femme: Bound in Sexual Difference" in E. Ann Kaplan (ed.), Women in Film Noir (2nd edition); “The She-man: Postmodern Bi-sexed Performance in Film and Video” in Jane Gaines (ed.), Classical Hollywood Narrative: The Paradigm Wars; "Transgender Mirrors” in Christine Holmlund and Cythia Fuchs (eds.), Between the Sheets, in the Streets; "Redressing the 'Natural': The Temporary Transvestite Film" in Barry Grant (ed.), Film Genre. His articles and reviews have appeared in Jump Cut; Afterimage; Camera Obscura; Cinematograph; Quarterly Review of Film and Video; Wide Angle; and Screen.

Straayer is an Editorial board member of TSQ: Transgender Quarterly and Guest co-editor of TSQ 5.2 The Surgery Issue. He was a Recipient of the David Payne Carter Award for Teaching Excellence; Guest Curator of “Lesbian Genders” at the Whitney Museum of American Art; Program advisor, Transmutation: International Transgender Festival; Co-organizer of Gender Reel NYU: Transgender Film Festival.