Abraham Weil, Assistant Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at California State University, Long Beach, discusses with USC faculty his article "Trans*versal Animacies and the Mattering of Black Trans* Political Life," published in Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities (Volume 22, 2017), and its applications for the teaching of writing and rhetoric. Here he explores trans*versal connections between transness, blackness, and the animal through Félix Guattari's notion of "transversal" in connection with #blacklivesmatter and #blacktranslivematter movements that draw on critical animal studies to reveal ways that species hierarchies are always present in processes of racialization that allow some lives to matter more, or less, than others. How can such realizations become the work of specific approaches to writing and writing assignments? Join us for this exploration and more.