POSTPONED: WGS Seminar Series: Tesla Cariani "Gender Reveals: Logics of Exposure and Trans* Narratives”

This talk discusses how “the reveal” is a structuring mechanism and common trope in trans narratives across genres. Tesla Cariani examines “the reveal” as a visuo-narrative device often deployed in popular media to elicit heightened affects like shock, disgust, excitement, or contempt. In this talk, Cariani traces the development of gender reveals from early silent films to more contemporary texts like Jen Wang’s graphic novel The Prince and the Dressmaker and the show Pose to argue that the reveal is attached to ideas of visibility and is one expression of gender-based violence. Ultimately, they argue that the logic of reveals does not, in fact, reveal knowledge of trans bodies but rather shows the reproduction of cissexism itself.

Tesla Cariani is a Lecturer of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Boston University. As a scholar and teacher of queer and trans visual cultures, Cariani’s research on contemporary media and literature examines how gender, sexuality, and race are fundamentally shaped by the visual. Cariani holds a PhD in English and as well as a certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Emory University (2021). Before joining the WGS Program at Boston University, Cariani was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Rice University (2022-2024) and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Emory University (2021-2022).

Cariani’s current book project, Visibility Will Not Save Us: Violence, Embodiment, and Affect in Queer and Trans Media, grapples with the potential violence of—and cultural desire for—queer and trans visibility. This work traces aesthetic and narrative strategies that challenge representational conventions to offer new politics and possibilities for queer and trans life. Cariani’s writing has been published in Parallax, PMLA, The LGBTQ Comics Studies Reader (winner of the 2023 Eisner Award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work), and The Routledge Handbook of Trans Literature.