HWS News
2 February 2026 • Faculty Cole-Kurz Publishes on 'Cercle Hermaphroditos'
Essay explores transgender relationships in the Gilded Age.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Intersectional Justice Joshua Bastian Cole-Kurz examines how transgender history, community and joy are represented across time in his essay “Circling Time: Cercle Hermaphroditos and the Continuum of Trans History,” published in the newly released anthology The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays Volume 2.
The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays Volume 2 is available in the Warren Hunting Smith Library and can be purchased here.
His essay is part of the larger volume that includes eight new plays by eight playwrights who are transgender. These plays focus on trans characters, trans life and gender diversity.
Set in 1895 New York City, Cercle Hermaphroditos follows Ambrose Carlton, a trans man looking to escape restrictive gender norms, as he meets Laureline Reeves, the founder of the underground social club for trans femmes, the Cercle Hermaphroditos. Carlton hopes to find a woman at the club he can legally marry, then play the roles expected of them in public while pursuing the life they want in private. But finding the proper match becomes more difficult than he expects, especially after the club is raided by police and the fragile safe place Reeves has created threatens to break apart for good.
“The play not only reflects what trans happiness and community might have looked like, in spite of dangers, in the late 19th century, but also actively creates trans happiness and community in the present,” Cole-Kurz writes in the piece.
To celebrate the release, Cole-Kurz joined other authors and playwrights for a virtual launch party of the book on HowlRound TV, a nonprofit livestreaming service centered around the performing arts and cultural fields.
“This anthology is special: a book of trans plays about trans life as it is actually, materially lived in time and space,” Anthony Sansonetti says of The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays Volume 1 in Theatre Survey.
Cole-Kurz joined HWS in 2025. His research traces how speculative aesthetics in film, television and theatre make trans masculinity legible in ways beyond what is visibly seen. He has been featured in Trans Studies Quarterly, Somatechnics, New Review of Film and Television Studies, 50 Key Figures in Queer U.S. Theatre, Theatre Topics, American Theatre, Huffington Post and The Daily Beast. He is working on an upcoming monograph with Queer Screen Series through Wayne State University Press. He is a member of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and the Current Junior Co-Chair of the SCMS Queer and Trans Caucus. Cole-Kurz earned a bachelor’s degree from James Madison University, a master’s from CUNY Brooklyn College, a master’s from Cornell University and a Ph.D. from Cornell.
Top: Visiting Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Intersectional Justice Joshua Bastian Cole-Kurz holds a copy of The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays Volume 2 in the Warren Hunting Smith Library.
