Max Gonen is a PhD student in the department of communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, working in the areas of performance studies, media studies, and gender and sexuality studies. Max is broadly interested in poesis as a trans methodology and uses performance theory and experimental writing to investigate the intersections of wellness and hegemony. He uses performance ethnography to explore spaces and situations where his transmale body both challenges and reproduces dominant cultural processes to figure out why he’s always uncomfortable in groups. He likes kickboxing, television and poetry.