About

Wesleigh Gates is an artist and PhD candidate working primarily in trans studies and performance studies. Her dissertation project examines the relationship of boxing to trans subject formation within the broader context of U.S. physical culture, anti-trans animus, and the politics of identity. She has received the American Association of University Women's American Dissertation Fellowship, the Fulbright/Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad award (subsequently revoked by the current federal administration for "gender ideology"), the American Society for Theatre Research’s Thomas Marshall Graduate Student Award, and funding from numerous UCLA sources including the Center for the Study of Women, the Fowler Museum, the Latin American Institute, the Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, and the School of Arts and Architecture. Her work has been published in ASAP/Review, PARtake: The Journal of Performance as Research, and a special issue of Media-N on trans new media art, with publications forthcoming in Women & Performance and TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly.

Wesleigh’s original performance work has shown in Los Angeles and across the United States, and she has collaborated with artists including Julie Tolentino, Jamison Edgar, Caden Manson/Big Art Group, Dan Safer/Witness Relocation, and WACD alums Emily Barasch and Brendan Drake. She holds an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University and is the founder of TSLUR (Transfems in Solidarity Leading Unconventional Research), an LA-based studio initiating collaborations between transfeminine artists working in performance across disciplines.

Areas of Interest

Trans, queer, and gender/sexuality studies; performance studies, dance studies, sports studies; critical phenomenology; critical geography and theories of space; disability studies, critical race studies, and interdisciplinary theories of the body; American studies.