Sociology Seminar Series: Joss Greene

"Gender Bound: Prisons, Trans Lives, and the Abolitionist Horizon" Transgender-responsive policies might seem like a radical new idea for prisons, but California's creation of tailored housing policies for gender-nonconforming prisoners began in 1941. In Gender Bound, Joss Greene investigates how and why California prisons have attempted to manage gender nonconformity over the past eighty years, and how incarcerated people have resisted. Drawing on archival research, ethnographic observation, and 136 interviews with formerly incarcerated trans people, advocates, policymakers, and former prison staff, Gender Bound offers new insight into the history of gender, the intersectional nature of punishment, and steadfast struggles for freedom. Joss Greene is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Davis. He studies gender, punishment, and social change, with much of his work focusing on how multiply marginalized transgender people navigate inequality and craft lives of meaning. He has published his research in the American Journal of Sociology, Social Problems, and Theory & Society,among other journals. His first book Gender Bound: Prisons, Trans Lives, and the Abolitionist Horizon will be published by UC Press in June 2026.