In this book talk activist, author, and educator Eli Erlick will read from her book “Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850 – 1950” which was published by Manchester University Press in 2025. The book focuses on the lives of thirty transgender people in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The narratives chronicle the grit, joy, and survival of trans people before gender became an everyday term.

The reading & the talk will be in English.

Welcome by Andreas Brunner, Qwien; moderation S.E. Eisterer, Princeton University.

Eli Erlick is an activist, author, and educator based in New York City. She is the program director of the NYC Trans Archives and Martin Duberman Visiting Fellow at the New York Public Library. Her first book, Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950 uncovered thirty trans narratives that radically disrupt popular ideas about transgender history. Her forthcoming second book, Outcasts Within: Understanding the Transgender Far Right, explores why right-wing transgender people adopt their views and what we can do to prevent others from joining them. She holds a PhD in Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she researched political philosophy, social movements, and transgender history.