PhD Program (She/Her)
Campus
- Downtown Toronto (St. George)
Fields of Study
- Canada
- Cultural and Intellectual
- Gender, Sex, and Sexualities
- Social
- United States
Areas of Interest
Social histories of trans existence, Trans feminine sub-cultures, trans feminine periodical networks, trans feminine porn studies, trans feminine sex-work, normativity, desirability, and respectability as they relate to 20th-century trans existences
Major and Minor Fields
Major
- Gender, Sex, and Sexualities
Minor 1
Histories of Erotica
Minor 2
Critical Public Histories of Gender, Sex, and Sexualities
Working Dissertation
Title
“Delicate Sisterhood/ Durable Borders: The Texture of Existence in 20th -Century North American Straight Trans Feminine Subcult
Supervisors
Dr. Elspeth Brown
Biography
Aino Pihlak is a trans woman and emerging social historian who studies past articulations of trans feminine existence. In addition to her interest in trans feminine porn studies, she is a scholar of twentieth-century, Anglophone, and overwhelmingly white, trans feminine subcultural periodical networks. She hopes her analyses of the complexities and messiness of past trans lives honours those who built the path she now walks on.
Awards
- 2028 Jeanne Armour Graduate Scholarship in Canadian History University of Toronto
- 2026 Canada Graduate Scholarship Social Sciences And Humanities Research Council Of Canada
- 2024 Gold Medal for Outstanding Master’s Thesis or Project in the Humanities University of Victoria Faculty of Humanities
- 2022 William Petrie Graduate Student Library Scholarship University of Victoria
- 2021 Canada Graduate Scholarships – Master’s Program Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Publications
- Putting the Femme in Feminist: Trans Feminism and the ‘Male Lesbian’ in the American Second Wave (Wiley : 2025)
- Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco’s Tenderloin by Joseph Plaster (review) (University of Texas Press : 2025)
- Special Issue Editors' Introduction: Trans Histories by Trans Historians (University of Victoria : 2023)
- "Trans Histories by Trans Historians: Special Issue Editor’s Introduction" ( : 2023)
- "A Movable Closet: Constructions of Femininity Among Twentieth Century Transfeminine Periodical Communities" ( : 2023)
- “How Transgressive a Transsexual? The Contradictions in Transgression and Conformity Within Transfeminine Print Erotica” ( : 2022)
- How Transgressive a Transsexual? The Contradictions in Transgression and Conformity Within Transfeminine Print Erotica (University of Victoria : 2022)
Education
MA, History, The University of Victoria
BA, History & Political Science, The University of Ottawa
Cohort
- 2023-2024