Beyond the Binary

This Beyond the Binary panel discussion aims to create opportunities to explore researcher experiences with representing varied gender identities and expressions into the research process. Panelists will discuss measuring and encapsulating the experiences of members of these diverse marginalized communities across up-to-date methodological approaches, such as ethnographic work, surveys, and longitudinal qualitative work. We welcome U-M researchers at all stages (student research, faculty research, administrative research, postdoctoral research, etc.) and across disciplines to engage in this important conversation. We also welcome U-M researchers across disciplines (such as the social sciences, health services research, sciences research, humanities research and the creative arts) to engage in this discourse. 

Members of the University of Michigan community can register for the Zoom event here: https://myumi.ch/xdmX2

About the Panelists:

Jesse Beal joined the Spectrum Center in November 2021 as the Associate Director. Prior to arriving at the University of Michigan, they served as the Director of The Gender and Sexuality Campus Center at Michigan State University. They bring over a decade of experience leading student-facing affinity-based resource centers at Amherst College, Brandeis University, Suffolk University, and MSU. Jesse is an experienced student affairs practitioner with a demonstrated history of working towards equity and inclusion in higher education. Their practice is collaborative, student-centered, and justice based. Jesse has been a social justice and LGBTQIA2S+ activist, educator and consultant for the past fifteen years. They present regularly at national conferences and at many colleges, universities, and nonprofits. Jesse serves as the External Coordinator for the Consortium of Higher Education LGBTQ Resource Professionals, a member-based association working toward the liberation of LGBTQ people in higher education. In this role, Jesse is responsible for external partnerships, including the Jed Foundation, the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education, NASPA, and ACPA. Jesse is a Ph.D. student in the MSU Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education program studying LGBTQIA2S+ populations in higher education. 

Andrea Bolivar is currently an Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and a Faculty Associate of the Latina/o Studies Program here at Michigan. As a cultural anthropologist, Dr. Bolivar’s research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of Transgender Studies, Latinx studies, and Feminist Studies. Her book manuscript, "We Are a Fantasy:” Trans Latina Ways of Knowing, Being, and Loving, ethnographically examines the experiences of sex working transgender Latinas in the Chicago metropolitan area. It centers sex working trans Latinas’ epistemologies and ontologies, especially concerning five interrelated themes: fantasía, life/death, the body, immigration, and race--particularly Blackness and anti-Blackness. Further, We Are a Fantasy demonstrates how sex working trans Latina ways of being and knowing not only defy racist-cisgenderism more broadly, but also offer potentialities beyond transnormativity and normative Latinidad. She currently serves on the board of the Association of Latin@/x Anthropologists, and is committed to supporting diversity in academia. Dr. Bolivar earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis.

Alex Lange is currently an assistant professor of higher education in the School of Education at Colorado State University. They study students minoritized by race, gender, sexuality, and ability, as well as the social forces that marginalize them during college. Some of Dr. Lange's recent projects and collaborations include how LGBTQ+ students thrive in college, considerations for critical approaches to college student development, and the in/visibility of race and racism in LGBTQ higher education scholarship. Their largest, ongoing project is a national, longitudinal study of transgender college students' journeys through undergraduate education. This work examines how transgender students enter into, develop within, and exit from higher education. Their largest, ongoing project is a national, longitudinal study of transgender college students' journeys through undergraduate education. This work examines how transgender students enter into, develop within, and exit from higher education. Overall, Dr. Lange aims to help higher education professionals and researchers live up to their institutions' missions of quality, inclusiveness, and transformation for all members of campus communities. You can read their collaborative work on student activism in their first book, Identity-Based Student Activism: Power and Oppression on College Campuses (Routledge; published with Chris Linder, Stephen John Quaye, Meg E. Evans, and T. J. Stewart). Dr. Lange aims to help higher education professionals and researchers live up to their institutions' missions of quality, inclusiveness, and transformation for all members of campus communities. They earned their Ph.D. in educational policy and leadership studies from the University of Iowa.