Eric A. Stanley

Eric A. Stanley is an associate professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

They are the author of Atmospheres of Violence Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable (Duke University Press, 2021). In collaboration with Chris Vargas, they directed the films Homotopia (2006) and Criminal Queers (2019). Eric is also an editor, along with Tourmaline and Johanna Burton, of Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (MIT Press 2017) and with Nat Smith, Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex (AK Press, 2015/11).

Eric A. Stanley is an associate professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. They are also affiliated with the Program in Critical Theory and the Haas LGBTQ Citizenship Research Cluster.

Eric received a Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz and previously taught in the Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Their first manuscript Atmospheres of Violence: Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable (Duke 2021) argues racialized anti-trans/queer violence is foundational to, and not an aberration of, western modernity. Eric is also working on two other projects, the first on nonsovereignty and the trans/queer people involved in Left insurgent underground activities in the 1970s and 1980s, and a new project on geographies of dislocation and trans resistance, focusing on the Bay Area.

Along with Tourmaline and Johanna Burton, Eric edited the anthology Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2017), which won the Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature and the John Leo & Dana Heller Award for Best Single Work, Anthology, Multi-Authored, or Edited Book in LGBTQ Studies from the Popular Culture Association. With Nat Smith, they edited Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex (AK Press 2011/15), which won the Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies from CLAGS: Center for LGBTQ Studies.

In collaboration with Chris Vargas, Eric directed the films Criminal Queers (2019) and Homotopia (2008).

A Visual Interview with Eric Stanley on "Atmospheres of Violence".

YouTube Video for Atmospheres of Violence: Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable