“Whither Trans Studies?” asks editor TJ Billard in the first issue of the Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies published in June 2022. This foundational essay grapples with the tensions in the field of transgender studies and positions the Bulletin, or BATS, as a venue for the reorientation of trans studies toward addressing the material conditions of transgender existence.
Published by the Northwestern Libraries on behalf of the Center for Applied Transgender Studies, BATS is a platinum open access forum for academic research “addressing the social, cultural and political issues facing transgender and gender minority communities across the globe.” Accepting international and interdisciplinary work, BATS has just published its third issue in June 2023.
We took the opportunity on the occasion of this publication to ask TJ Billard, assistant professor in the School of Communication and editor of BATS, for their thoughts on this project one year in.
What has the reception been to BATS and has that informed the direction for further issues?
Billard: We’ve been very excited by the warm reception to BATS. It validated for us what we felt pretty confident of, which is that the field was in dire need of new spaces for new kinds of trans studies scholarship. It’s also been gratifying to watch as scholars have engaged with the work we publish focused on many of the very real and consequential issues trans people face daily, thinking about how our scholarship might inform the ways we fight to improve trans life.
Your foundational essay in the first issue is titled “Whither Trans Studies?” How has your own conception of this project and this field evolved over the course of the past year?
Billard: Over the last year—thanks in part to the essay I coauthored to kick off the journal—I’ve been building bridges with other leaders in trans studies so that we can increase cohesion and solidarity across the various subdomains of trans studies. I think the essay, the journal, and the Center have (thankfully) been instrumental in pushing the field to find common ground, to build up allegiances, and to create institutional spaces for us to thrive together. If anything, the past year has deepened my resolve to help facilitate this intra-field dialogue and to build up Northwestern as a torchbearer for multidisciplinary trans studies.
Partnership with the Libraries has meant that this journal is platinum open access, meaning neither the reader nor the author pay fees. How has open access impacted the spread of this published research?
Billard: The platinum open access status of the journal has done much good for the journal, the field, and the community. It’s been clear that researchers value the opportunity to publish in a journal without access barriers, where they feel their work can have maximum impact. The Bulletin is also the only open access journal in trans studies, so it provides a significant opportunity to the field to speak to wider audiences beyond the academy. And being open access has meant that non-academic community members have been able to engage with scholarly research in ways that have produced really fruitful conversations about trans people’s lived experiences.
After the publication of another issue, where do you see the next steps?
Billard: The Bulletin is excited to be publishing more groundbreaking research and for submissions to continue to roll in. But we’re also looking forward to publishing some tentpole special issues on important and understudied topics in trans studies that are really consequential for the community. We hope that these special issues will push the field forward, while also pushing scholars to integrate new viewpoints into their research.
The Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies is available to read for free at https://bulletin.appliedtransstudies.org/
For more on digital publishing at the Northwestern Libraries, see our Scholarly Research Services.