Will Younts is a first-year PhD student at the University of Tennessee studying American literature. Will uses trans studies and rhetorical deconstruction to examine the child in nineteenth century US culture, with a special focus on its role in the construction of cisgender. Their writing has explored child allegory in imperialism, a child who seems genderless in Moby-Dick, and alternative forms of kinship. Before coming to UT, they were a preschool teacher, working musician, and poet.