The Libel of Being New: Trans Children’s Letters to Doctors in the 1960s

Discussant: Dr. Julia Sinclair-Palm, Carleton University
Join us for a lecture and Q&A with Dr. Julian Gill-Peterson, author of Histories of the Transgender Child (University of Minnesota Press, 2018)
Transgender children today face a libel against the reality of their existence in the assumption that they are a brand new generation, unprecedented and without history. This talk explores how that costly falsehood can be challenged and overcome by locating trans children on the front lines of negotiating the postwar medical model that emerged in the 1960s, turning to a remarkable and difficult archive of letters written by children to doctors during that decade.
A light lunch will be served.