"Plastic Boy: Transgender Identity Unpacked" with Alden James Kosciesza

Aiden Kosciesza is a transgender writer, speaker, and activist who has given presentations about LGBT identity both in the US and abroad. He first spoke out about LGBT civil rights as a graduate student at Villanova University, and later developed a focus on transgender issues as he explored his own identity as a transgender man. Kosciesza began sharing his personal story of discovery aboard Peace Boat, a Japanese NGO that promotes peace and understanding through sustainable travel, and quickly discovered a passion for speaking that he would bring home to the United States. His self-destructive adolescence, his struggle to be accepted by his parents as an unexpected son, and his perspective as a trans* man living abroad all inform "Plastic Boy: Transgender Identity Unpacked."

Aiden received his B.A. from Drew University in 2005 and completed his M.A. in English at Villanova in 2011. His thesis, entitled “Ordinary, Extraordinary Men: Heroism, Community, Crisis, and the Prescription for American Masculinity in Continental Drift, Watchmen, and Fight Club,” studies manhood in post-Vietnam, pre-9/11 American literature and resonates with his experience of defining his own masculinity. Now an English educator at Rowan University, Kosciesza remains fascinated with gender in both practical and philosophical terms.

Aiden Kosciesza's appearance in the Colloquium series is sponsored by the First Year Seminar Course "Man up, Act Like a Lady" taught by Drs. Catherine Romagnolo and Marie Bongiovanni, and is made possible through funding from the 2014-15 President's Innovation Grants and the Woomer Endowment.

Price: Free