Fonds F0706 - Michael A. Gilbert fonds

Michael A. Gilbert, writer and professor, was born in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn and then Hunter College, part of the City University of New York, between 1962 and 1966. He graduated with a BA in philosophy and political science in January 1967. Gilbert then attended the State University of New York at Buffalo, undertaking graduate studies in philosophy until June 1968. By September 1968, Gilbert had moved to Canada to begin graduate studies at the University of Waterloo. He completed his PhD in 1974 with a thesis entitled “A Formal Analysis of Relevance”. Gilbert’s academic teaching career began in earnest with his appointment as a lecturer at the University of Toronto in the Department of Philosophy from 1973 to 1975 and at its School of Continuing Studies from 1974 to 1980, where he taught a course entitled “How to Win an Argument”. In 1975, Gilbert was hired as a professor of philosophy at York University and served as the Department of Philosophy’s undergraduate program director in the 1990s and 2000s. Gilbert has taught courses and published articles in the areas of philosophy, argumentation theory, and gender/transgender theory, and runs a consultancy firm, Paradox Communications (previously Effective Dispute Management).

Gilbert is the author of non-fiction books “How to Win an Argument” (1979), “Coalescent Argumentation” (1997), “Arguing with People” (2014), as well as novels “Office Party” (1981) and “Yellow Angel” (1985). “Office Party” was adapted into a screenplay and produced as a film, “Hostile Takeover”, in 1988.

Gilbert identifies as a cross dresser and is also known by the name Miqqi Alicia Gilbert. Gilbert is a founding member of the Toronto group Xpressions, a director of the Fantasia Fair, and was a columnist for the magazine of the International Foundation for Gender Education, “Transgender Tapestry”.