Jordan Hale Keesler

Jordan Keesler (they/ze) is a doctoral student in The Harriet Tubman Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Prior to their doctoral studies, Jordan received their M.A. from Georgia State University (2022) and B.A. from Agnes Scott College (2019) in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Hir’s M.A. thesis, “Stories of Exile: The Political Construction of the Transgender Athlete” explored the relationship between gendered sports policy since 1936 and anti-trans sports laws in 2021.

Ze currently works at the intersection of trans studies, physical cultural studies, and archival methods to explore formations of trans-masculine identities in rugby. Their research has appeared in Sociology of Sport Journal and The Transgender Athlete (2023). Ze recently received the Barbara Brown Outstanding Student Doctoral Paper Award from the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport for their work on phenomenological understandings of transness in softball and rugby.

Additionally, Jordan serves as the Director of Membership and Outreach for WGS South where ze helps foster feminist and queer visions of the South. When ze is not keeping up with their studies you can find them playing rugby with the DC Furies.