About
Julian is originally from Memphis, TN and received his B.A. from the University of Memphis in December 2019, with majors in Philosophy, English, and French. He is a PhD Candidate in Philosophy and 2024 Graduate Fellow at Michigan's Sweetland Center for Writing.
Julian's research is at the intersection of ancient Greek philosophy, contemporary social/political philosophy, and philosophy of literature. In particular, his dissertation project articulates a concept of trans utopianism by drawing on a range of queer and trans art and literature, including film and documentary about Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera and the recent speculative novels Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg (2018) and Future Feeling by Joss Lake (2021). Julian argues that, in addition to being a literary phenomenon and tool for contemporary activism and political organizing, trans utopianism can be employed when reading historical texts which are not typically understood as trans, as a way of identifying resources in the past to imagine a more liberatory future. For this part of the project, he turns to Plato's Republic, and argues that several features of the kallipolis are trans utopian in that they depict social organization based on gender anti-essentialism and displace heteronormative reproductive family units as the central organizing units of society. Using trans utopianism as a way of understanding this broad range of literature and art can both offer a new understanding of the radical nature of Plato's utopia, as well as bring out several of the many important philosophical insights found in contemporary trans art and literature.
