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eagandean.bsky.social
Eagan Dean
@eagandean.bsky.social
110 followers 160 following 39 posts
he/they
asst prof College of Wooster
[My posts do not reflect my employer]
Eagandean.com

Early/C19 US lit & culture, trans/gender studies
learning to teach for justice
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eagandean.bsky.social
CFP in C19 trans studies for @c19americanists.bsky.social 2026 conference!

#C192026 #transstudies #c19
CFP: Rhizomatic Gender C19 conference, Cincinnati, OH March 12-14 2026 Cisness, like many forms of normativity, defines itself through rejecting what it constructs as the abnormal. There are also, however, many nineteenth century American stories of entangled figures whose genders arise from shared roots. This era is replete with gender-nonnormative and trans figures who develop their genders in relationship to more normative companions (Woolson’s Felipa and her tourists, Ellen Craft in disguise with her husband,) or enemies (Lillie Blake’s Frank Heywood against Judge Swinton), as well as communities whose gender norms emerge when they embrace a gender rebel (the March sisters and Jo, Hawkeye’s company and David Gamut). It seems as if transness and cisness are always subtending one another. Drawing from new discourses about the co-constitutive nature of cisness and transness, especially Emma Heaney’s Feminism Against Cisness, we invite papers that consider normative and nonnormative genders in relation. Can we look at C19 gender as a rhizome––as a network of people and communities whose gender expressions bloom because of their submerged entanglements? What relationships underlie/are underground to what look like individual expressions of gender? Particularly, how do these relationships develop between trans and non-trans people? How do trans and non-trans people collaboratively develop narratives and self-concepts of gender, including within and across racial dynamics of power? What alliances emerge across cis and trans characters in C19 literature and history? What conditions––material, social, and figural––have allowed for trans life to persist? What can we learn from these stories as teachers and thinkers living in an environment that discourages solidarity with trans people? Topics papers might address include: The roles of trans characters/episodes of gender nonconformity in the bildungsroman. The prevalence of minor trans characters and the significance and/or function of their minorness. Constructions of cisness/normativity that embrace rather than reject trans characters (and the potential/pitfalls of this sort of inclusion). How such relationships challenge a cis/trans distinction. White supremacy’s role in such distinctions. Clandestine networks of care forged across a seeming cis/trans binary. Interracial solidarity (and its failures) in constructing gender. Strange, unwieldy, or baffling means of describing both cis and transgender. Embodiment and lived experience as gender’s locus. The challenges of trans historiography in American literature. The role of artificiality (especially fiction) in constructing trans and non-trans alike. Please submit an abstract of 200-300 words to Eagan Dean (eagan.dean@stanford.edu) and Will Younts (wyounts@vols.utk.edu) by August 10.
June 17, 2025 at 2:05 AM
eagandean.bsky.social
"This article does not argue that archiving is inherently radical, but rather that archiving collaboratively, and with a queer of color feminist ethic of care, is a kind of bridge work...[which] is organizing in that it embraces contradiction: the 'both/and." www.scholarlyediting.org/issues/42/lo...
A screenshot from the article. Above, two photos of people looking at boxes and papers in a storage area, one with short gray hair and the other with long black hair. The text reads, Figure 3: Bridge work (photographs by Mich Ling, 2023). Emily and I in Merle’s garage. Reproduced by permission of Merle Woo. Looking for Merle is an archiving project full of contradiction; it bridges the personal and the collective, the embodied and the digital, the grassroots and the institutional, the past and the present, the radical and the reformist. An organizer works not only to critique and dismantle systems but also to build alternative ones. This process inevitably produces new kinds of contradictions that we then work to resolve. Bridge work is about building shared analysis and strategic action, or about navigating the space between the two. In this sense, to do bridge work is to move through contradiction with an ethics of accountability, care, and generosity A screenshot of a poster, reading: 'WOMEN AGAINST RACISM ANNUAL CONFERENCE THE POLITICS OF COLOR APRIL 10-12, 1987 Speakers: Winona LaDuke, Toni Cade Bambara, Merle Woo, Ricky Sherover-Marcuse In Concert: Sweet Honey In The Rock For more information, contact the Women Against Racism Committee at Women's Resource and Action Center, The University of Iowa, 130 N. Madison, Iowa City, Iowa 52242, 319/335-1486. Caption reads, Figure 5: The Politics Color (photograph by Mich Ling, 2023), a flyer for Women Against Racism' annual conference in 1987 from Merle's papers. Reprinted by permission of Merle Woo.'
June 12, 2025 at 1:49 AM
eagandean.bsky.social
What happens to the archives of our feminist elders? Walk alongside scholar Mich Ling as they work with Merle Woo--a contributor to /This Bridge Called My Back/ and an Ethnic Studies vanguard--to organize, analyze, and preserve her records.
A screenshot of the first part of an article on Scholarly Editing's website. The text reads, Looking for Merle: Participatory Archiving as Bridge Work. Mich Ling, Rutgers University. Scholarly Editing, Volume 42 After all, the subversive intellectual came under false pretenses, with bad documents, out of love. Her labor is as necessary as it is unwelcome. The university needs what she bears but cannot bear what she brings. —Stefano Harvey and Fred Moten I have studied the history of our people in this country . . . I want to tell everyone about that, all the particulars that are left out of our schools . . . I feel now that I can begin to put our lives in a larger framework. Ma, a larger framework! The outlines for us are time and blood, but today there is breadth possible through making connections with others involved in community struggle. —Merle Woo
June 12, 2025 at 1:29 AM
eagandean.bsky.social
It came up on my feed with Dolly herself. A sign!
May 31, 2025 at 5:41 PM
eagandean.bsky.social
I'm over the moon to get back to my liberal arts roots this fall, when I'll start as assistant professor of English at the College of Wooster in OH.

The list of people & systems that helped me get where I am grows every year, incl the Clayman Institute. My husband's support is my favorite constant.
Eagan is standing outdoors in a blue shirt, smiling and holding a yellow and black pennant that says "The College of Wooster."
May 23, 2025 at 5:58 PM
eagandean.bsky.social
Here is a flowchart of my 2023-2024 year on the job market, when I was ABD. The process landed me at a wonderful, supportive, exciting postdoc at Stanford's Clayman Institute.

It was also grueling and demoralizing. Job seekers, please remember that in a sea of "no," you only need one "yes."
A flowchart of job applications. Applications: 19 English, 16 WGS, 25 Postdoc/VAP, 7 Other Instructor, 45 Writing Instruction. 103 Rejected, 1 Added to adjunct pool, 2 search canceled, 5 Additional materials request, 14 zoom interviews, 8 campus visits, 4 offers, 1 accepted, 2 withdrew after offer.
May 14, 2025 at 9:17 PM