Prof. Dr. K. Allison Hammer
Prof. Dr. K. Allison Hammer was a visiting fellow at the Center for Diversity, Media, and Law during the summer of 2024 and will be back during the 2026 summer term. Generously supported by the Forschungscampus Mittelhessen, their residency constituted part of the University of Giessen’s commitment to diversity research and studies. Prof. Hammer is based in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, where they contribute to interdisciplinary research and teaching on gender justice, embodiment, and radical futurities as Associate Professor and Coordinator.
Trump, Christian Nationalism, and Trans Utopias at the Center
As part of the lecture series “Diversity Issues in the USA: Transnational Perspectives on the 2024 Presidential Elections,” Dr. Hammer delivered a public talk that critically examined how a renewed Trump presidency poses an existential threat to trans communities in the United States, especially trans feminine individuals. They argued that while Trump’s authoritarian tendencies have received significant attention, his deep-rooted ties to White Christian nationalism have not been sufficiently theorized within trans studies. Dr. Hammer highlighted how evangelical extremists seek to frame trans existence as a spiritual and political crisis using the rhetoric of bodily sin, reproductive essentialism, and patriarchal family values to portray trans individuals as symbols of societal collapse.
The lecture introduced two central figures—the vigilante and the world crusader—as key to understanding the authoritarian imaginary Trump’s base embraces that envisions a radically transformed U.S. grounded in moral absolutism and enforced gender norms. Dr. Hammer emphasized the transnational and theological dimensions of this movement, calling for deeper engagement across political theory, religious studies, and trans scholarship.
In July 2024, Prof. Hammer led a second workshop titled “Trans Utopia,” with faculty and students that revolved around their essay, “Exuberant Embodiment: A Trans Utopia for an Unbearable Present,” forthcoming in Utopian Studies: The Journal of the Society for Utopian Studies (36.1, 2025). In this workshop and essay, Prof. Hammer proposed a vision of an embodied utopia based in heterogeneity and plurality which can counteract the present drive toward human and other-than-human monocultures. Following recent trends in trans studies, Hammer joined posthumanist philosophy, trans theory, and utopian studies, to argue that the actualization of what they call “exuberant embodiment” requires a dismantling of the nature/human, nature/culture, and nature/technology dualisms that justify exploitation of bodies under predatory capitalism. Through an archive of contemporary sculpture, painting, and poetry for and by trans and crip artists, Hammer offered practices and objects for anti-capitalist utopian trans futures, in unruly alliance with the work of queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz.
The Center for Diversity, Media, and Law remains grateful for Prof. Hammer’s visit as well as their contribution to the Center’s publication, Diversity Issues in the USA (transcript, 2024, edited by Melanie Kreitler and Greta Olson). Their chapter, “How to Make an Enemy: Transmisogyny and the 2024 Presidential Election,” has proven highly prescient. Allison Hammer’s work shapes conversations about trans embodiment, anti-authoritarian resistance, and the possibilities of more livable futures.