About

Wesleigh Gates is an artist and PhD candidate working primarily in trans studies and performance studies. Her dissertation project investigates the importance of collective movement practices in trans and travesti communities across the Americas. She is a recipient of the Fulbright/Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad award, the American Society for Theatre Research’s Thomas Marshall Graduate Student Award, and funding from numerous UCLA sources including the Fowler Museum, the Latin American Institute, the Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, and the School of Arts and Architecture. She has been published in PARtake: The Journal of Performance as Research, Gulf Coast Journal, and most recently in a special issue of Media-N on trans new media art, with work forthcoming in TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly.

Wesleigh’s original performance work has shown in Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Boston, 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. With support from Los Angeles Performance Practice, she is currently at work on a new performance, The Grafters, embracing and interrogating the body horror of gender transition. MFA, Carnegie Mellon University.

Areas of Interest

Trans studies, trans of color critique, travesti theory; performance studies, dance studies, theories of performativity and choreography; critical and applied phenomenology; critical geography, urban studies, theories of space; LGBTQ studies, queer theory, anthropology of gender and sexuality; transfeminist epistemologies.