Toby Cason Beauchamp

Toby Beauchamp is Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies and affiliate faculty in the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His first book, Going Stealth: Transgender Politics and U.S. Surveillance Practices (Duke University Press, 2019) examines the problem of visibility in trans politics, arguing that the scrutinizing of gender nonconformity is motivated less by explicit transgender identities than by the perceived threat that gender nonconformity poses to the U.S. racial and security state.

Prof. Beauchamp's new research brings trans studies into conversation with the environmental humanities to consider topics such as the transnational production and circulation of synthetic hormones, U.S. border patrol and ecological destruction, and the creation and maintenance of long-distance hiking trails. His writing appears in journals including GLQ, Feminist Formations, Radical History Review, and Surveillance & Society, as well as several edited book collections. 

Prof. Beauchamp was named a Helen Corley Petit Scholar for 2019-2020, an award supporting scholarship and teaching for early-career faculty in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, and a Conrad Humanities Scholar for 2020-2025, which recognizes outstanding associate professors in the College. During academic years 2019-2021, Prof. Beauchamp is a Resident Associate at the Center for Advanced Study at Illinois; with his colleague A. Naomi Paik in Asian American Studies, he directs the CAS event series on the theme of Abolition. When not at work, he most enjoys spending time outdoors, and is an avid long-distance hiker.