Spring 2020 Anschutz Lecture: Becoming a Man

P. Carl reads from his newly released book “Becoming a Man: The Story of a Transition.” The memoir covers the personal, political, and intellectual consequences of becoming a white man in 2017 after a lifetime of being treated like a woman and experiencing the discrimination of daring to live with ambition and conviction. In this lecture, he focuses on his evolving relationship to gender theory and how it coincides and conflicts with his own embodied experience living a trans life in three dimensions.

P. Carl, the Spring 2020 Anschutz Distinguished Fellow in American Studies at Princeton University, is a nonfiction writer and distinguished artist in residence at Emerson College in Boston, and a writer and lecturer on theater, gender, inclusive practices, and innovative models for building community and organizations. He is an accomplished theater artist, most recently the dramaturg and producer on a range of diverse projects including Claudia Rankine’s new play, “The White Card,” Melinda Lopez’s “Mala” (2017 winner of the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding New Script), Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s “How to Be a Rock Critic,” and Deborah Stein and Suli Holum’s “The Wholehearted.” He is the founder of the online journal HowlRound.

His awards include: in 2018, the Berlin Prize for the forthcoming memoir “Becoming a Man” (Simon and Schuster, 2020), and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in creative nonfiction; in 2017, an Art of Change Fellowship from the Ford Foundation. In 2015, Carl was named Theater Person of the Year by the National Theater Conference. Carl was formerly director of HowlRound Theatre Commons; co-artistic director of ArtsEmerson (Emerson College); director of artistic development, Steppenwolf Theater, and producing artistic director of the Playwrights’ Center, Minneapolis.