# Susan Stryker Born May 9, 1961 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. American historian, filmmaker, and academic — **the single most foundational figure in the consolidation of trans studies as an academic discipline** and the scholar most responsible for recovering the [[Compton's Cafeteria Riot]] into mainstream LGBTQ historical memory. ## Academic Foundations Stryker earned her PhD in U.S. history from UC Berkeley in 1992. Her career has had two interlocking strands: **Academic (founding trans studies as a field):** - ***My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage*** (1994) — Stryker's foundational essay (originally a 1993 conference talk) that became one of the field-launching texts of academic trans studies - ***Transgender History*** (2008; revised 2017 as *Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution*) — the first comprehensive scholarly history of the American trans movement, now the standard textbook in college trans-studies courses - **Founding co-editor of *TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly*** (2014, with Paisley Currah) — the first peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to trans studies; Duke University Press - **The Transgender Studies Reader** (2006; volume 2 in 2013) — the canonical scholarly anthology of trans-studies primary texts **Public-history and film:** - ***Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria*** (2005) — co-directed with Victor Silverman. The documentary that single-handedly recovered the [[Compton's Cafeteria Riot]] from obscurity into mainstream LGBTQ historical narrative - Served as **Executive Director of the GLBT Historical Society** in San Francisco (1999-2003) — the period during which the Society became the leading institutional archive for American trans history ## Place in the Vault Stryker is the **single individual most responsible for the existence of contemporary academic trans studies as a recognized field** — and for the contemporary public understanding that trans history did not begin at Stonewall, but extends backward through Compton's Cafeteria (1966), the [[Lavender Scare]], the [[Magnus Hirschfeld]] / Weimar Berlin research tradition, and the long pre-medical-modernity history of gender-variance across cultures. Her scholarly authority and institutional infrastructure-building are foundational to the contemporary trans-political movement's ability to make historical claims grounded in primary-source research. --- ## See Also - [[Queer Liberation Ecosystem]] - [[Queer Liberation Timeline]] - [[Compton's Cafeteria Riot]] - [[Magnus Hirschfeld]]