Perry Zurn

Trans people have always lived in the cracks of institutions-and the university is no exception. In How We Make Each Other, Perry Zurn tells the stories of how trans people make and live their lives at the edges of the university in ways that sometimes lead to policy change but always leave participants and institutions different than they were before. Using the Five Colleges in Massachusetts as a case study, Zurn notes that Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, have been at the forefront of developing trans-inclusive policies in higher education, often in response to student organizing. Zurn focuses on the stories of trans students, staff, faculty, and community members within and alongside these institutions, exploring how they have built themselves and each other. Drawing on official archives as well as over 100 interviews, Zurn shows how trans people in the Five Colleges have made history, forged resistance habits, and cultivated hope.

Trans people have always lived in the cracks of institutions-and the university is no exception. In How We Make Each Other, Perry Zurn tells the stories of how trans people make and live their lives at the edges of the university in ways that sometimes lead to policy change but always leave participants and institutions different than they were before. Using the Five Colleges in Massachusetts as a case study, Zurn notes that Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, have been at the forefront of developing trans-inclusive policies in higher education, often in response to student organizing. Zurn focuses on the stories of trans students, staff, faculty, and community members within and alongside these institutions, exploring how they have built themselves and each other. Drawing on official archives as well as over 100 interviews, Zurn shows how trans people in the Five Colleges have made history, forged resistance habits, and cultivated hope.

An exhilarating, genre-bending exploration of curiosity’s powerful capacity to connect ideas and people. Curious about something? Google it. Look at it. Ask a question. But is curiosity simply information seeking? According to this exhilarating, genre-bending book, what’s left out of the conventional understanding of curiosity are the wandering tracks, the weaving concepts, the knitting of ideas, and the thatching of knowledge systems—the networks, the relations between ideas and between people. Curiosity, say Perry Zurn and Dani Bassett, is a practice of connection: it connects ideas into networks of knowledge, and it connects knowers themselves, both to the knowledge they seek and to each other. Zurn and Bassett—identical twins who write that their book “represents the thought of one mind and two bodies”—harness their respective expertise in the humanities and the sciences to get irrepressibly curious about curiosity. Traipsing across literatures of antiquity and medieval science, Victorian poetry and nature essays, as well as work by writers from a variety of marginalized communities, they trace a multitudinous curiosity. They identify three styles of curiosity—the busybody, who collects stories, creating loose knowledge networks; the hunter, who hunts down secrets or discoveries, creating tight networks; and the dancer, who takes leaps of creative imagination, creating loopy ones. Investigating what happens in a curious brain, they offer an accessible account of the network neuroscience of curiosity. And they sketch out a new kind of curiosity-centric and inclusive education that embraces everyone’s curiosity. The book performs the very curiosity that it describes, inviting readers to participate—to be curious with the book and not simply about it.

A trailblazing exploration of the political stakes of curiosity Curiosity is political. Who is curious, when, and how reflects the social values and power structures of a given society. In Curiosity and Power, Perry Zurn explores the political philosophy of curiosity, staking the groundbreaking claim that it is a social force-the heartbeat of political resistance and a critical factor in social justice. He argues that the very scaffolding of curiosity is the product of political architectures, and exploring these values and architectures is crucial if we are to better understand, and more ethically navigate, the struggle over inquiry in an unequal world. Curiosity and Power explores curiosity through the lens of political philosophy-weaving in Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida in doing so-and the experience of political marginalization, demonstrating that curiosity is implicated equally in the maintenance of societies and in their transformation. Curiosity plays as central a role in establishing social institutions and fields of inquiry as it does in their deconstruction and in building new forms of political community. Understanding curiosity is critical to understanding politics, and understanding politics is critical to understanding curiosity. Drawing not only on philosophy and political theory but also on feminist theory, race theory, disability studies, and trans studies, Curiosity and Power tracks curiosity in the structures of political marginalization and resistance-from the Civil Rights Movement to building better social relationships. Curiosity and Power insists that the power of curiosity be recognized and engaged responsibly.

A trailblazing exploration of the political stakes of curiosity Curiosity is political. Who is curious, when, and how reflects the social values and power structures of a given society. In Curiosity and Power, Perry Zurn explores the political philosophy of curiosity, staking the groundbreaking claim that it is a social force-the heartbeat of political resistance and a critical factor in social justice. He argues that the very scaffolding of curiosity is the product of political architectures, and exploring these values and architectures is crucial if we are to better understand, and more ethically navigate, the struggle over inquiry in an unequal world. Curiosity and Power explores curiosity through the lens of political philosophy-weaving in Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida in doing so-and the experience of political marginalization, demonstrating that curiosity is implicated equally in the maintenance of societies and in their transformation. Curiosity plays as central a role in establishing social institutions and fields of inquiry as it does in their deconstruction and in building new forms of political community. Understanding curiosity is critical to understanding politics, and understanding politics is critical to understanding curiosity. Drawing not only on philosophy and political theory but also on feminist theory, race theory, disability studies, and trans studies, Curiosity and Power tracks curiosity in the structures of political marginalization and resistance-from the Civil Rights Movement to building better social relationships. Curiosity and Power insists that the power of curiosity be recognized and engaged responsibly.