Dartmouth Events

Published in 1967 by Harold Garfinkel, this case draws on interviews with a young woman pseudonymized as Agnes who came to the UCLA clinic for “sex disorders” in the late 1950s.  Much like a Freudian case study, Garfinkel’s analysis of Agnes’ life captured the imagination of scholars – evidenced by the many re-interpretations that have emerged in feminist and queer theory and transgender studies over the last 50 years. Rather than a new re-interpretation, however, my talk draws on the original interview materials that I located while personally archiving Harold Garfinkel’s papers – a project that also unearthed eight other life histories of gender non-conforming people who were contemporaries of Agnes at UCLA but who did not make it into the published record. Working collaboratively with filmmaker Chase Joynt, I have built two projects from this research: first, a feature-length documentary film; second, an academic book in progress that locates Garfinkel’s research with Agnes in the historical context of the emerging disciplines of sex and gender in sociology and psychology in late 1950s. In my talk today, I discuss the trajectory of these two projects and make a case for multi-media and transdisciplinary approaches in gender & sexuality studies.