The power of trans

I t was all about transformation. "Trans Arts" was a two-hour panel Wednesday of poets, critics, and performers who in some cases identify with the gender opposite from the bodies in which they were born. Stephen (sometimes Stephanie) Burt , a Harvard professor of English, moderated the late-afternoon panel at Sackler Lecture Hall, wearing flats, a stylish black dress, and a deep black, shoulder-length wig. He also emceed two hours of evening performances, including a video by documentarian D'hana Perry and storytelling by transgender legend and "Gender Outlaw" author Kate Bornstein , whose 2012 memoir is titled "A Queer and Pleasant Danger." To see Bornstein at work, said Burt afterward, was "transformational." That was the idea. Before the event, Homi Bhabha, director of Harvard's Mahindra Humanities Center , described it as a University-wide coming out for the trans arts, including texts, media, and performances from within the world of what insiders call the trans and genderqueer life. The center was co-sponsor of "Trans Arts," along with the Committee on Degrees in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. It is time "to help build communities" in support of art-making outside the cultural binary of gender norms, Bhabha told an audience of 70.