“Trans Beyond Materialism” a special issue of QTR: A Journal of Trans and Queer Studies in Religion

Co-Editors: Siobhan Kelly (The University of Kansas) and C. Libby (Penn State University) 

Submission Deadline: June 15, 2027

For this special issue of QTR, we solicit work that theorizes trans life beyond materialism with attention to the intersections of religion/spirituality and trans studies.

The connection between transgender subjects, gender variance, and spiritual claims  appears in popular slogans asserting “trans people are sacred,” “trans people are divine,” and “trans people are magic.” These mantras, found on billboards, stickers, T-­ shirts, and coffee mugs, are often positioned as part of the burgeoning push for trans liberation, while opponents routinely castigate trans people as demonic forces. Simultaneous to such public discourses has been an uptick in the popularity of Marxist materialism among trans studies scholars and activists. From The Trans Marxist Issue (2024) of TSQ to Jules Joanne Gleeson and Elle O’Rourke’s edited volume, Transgender Marxism (2021), calls to attend more carefully to “trans life itself” and to the specific struggles of trans people trying to survive under capitalism proliferate. 

While we applaud the important work being done to expand attention to mundane materiality and the lived realities of trans subjects, this only offers a partial picture of trans life. In line with earlier critiques of historical materialism (Chakrabarty, Hennessy, H. Hartmann, Hollywood), we find such attempts to constrain trans reality within the category of “life itself” unsatisfying. To treat experience as reducible to materiality forfeits the range of trans life and thinking available to us, now and in the past. Additionally, the singular focus on materiality has often come at the expense of nonbinary trans subjects who are frequently aligned with immateriality, idealism, and false consciousness. Rather than scapegoating members of the trans community for their failure to achieve political liberation in the midst of a panoply of virulently anti-trans nation-states (a recurrent trend in trans studies since its earliest iterations) (Namaste 2000, Halberstam 2020), this special issue seeks to move beyond Marxist materialism toward an investigation of the psychological, supernatural, maddening, psychic, magical, interiorized, and esoteric aspects of trans existence. 

We take Susan Stryker’s (2026) insight that “religion and transness both touch on the question of how we experience a reality that is intrinsically multitudinous” as our starting point. The study of religion gives us the tools to ask questions that push beyond any pat division between the material and the immaterial. This special issue invites research on topics that highlight the importance of religious and psychological experiences in trans, nonbinary, and queer lives while also attending to the racist and colonial history of these frameworks. Histories of spirituality across traditions and geographies can provide challenging and complex archives from which modern trans, nonbinary, and queer people might draw inspiration or warning. We invite papers that further explore trans, nonbinary, and queer modes of transcendence and enchantment. To be considered for inclusion in this special issue, submissions must foreground intersections between religion/spirituality and trans studies, and critically engage with scholarship in religious studies/theological studies.

Potential topics and questions include:

• What unique insights does the study of religion offer to contemporary debates around trans materialism? 

• What kinds of rituals, practices, and habits shape trans studies and trans cultural production? How do these practices impact trans communities and traditions?

• Reconsiderations of the deployment of Marxist materialism in trans studies from historical, religious, and psychoanalytic perspectives.

• Attention to the interplay of language and meaning between materiality and immateriality. 

• How does trans of color critique problematize spiritual histories of trans identity, including narratives of esotericism, religious practice, and syncretism? 

• How do indigenous communities and trans communities in the Global South speak against the imperializing of trans spiritual beliefs and practices?

Please submit full papers by June 15, 2027.

QTR accepts academic articles and original creative work; please submit manuscripts via ScholarOne Manuscripts: https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/dup-qtr. Visit the editorial office website for more details.

Articles:
 Written work should be 7,000–9,000 words in length; articles should be accompanied by an abstract of no more than 150 words and 3–5 keywords. All submitted work must be anonymized. Submissions that do not meet these criteria will be returned for correction.

QTR uses The Chicago Manual of Style, eighteenth edition, as its main reference. When preparing an article for submission, please refer to the journal’s style guide.

Creative work:
 Creative work, whether audio or video, should be submitted with an artist’s statement of at least 200 words. Lower-resolution images are acceptable for the review process.