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A Body of One's Own: The Early Making of 'Sex Change' in Argentina, 1900–1930

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A Body of One's Own: The Early Making of ‘Sex Change’ in Argentina, 1900–1930

Patricio Simonetto
(Marie-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute of the Americas, UCL)

Simonetto will be analysing the early making of sex change in Argentina during the first decades of the twentieth century. It focuses on the embodiment of a new gender before the popularization of biotechnological procedures, as hormones that emerged in the 1930s or surgeries in the 1960s when embodiment was built mostly over clothing and gestures. To understand the building of sex change, the text reconstructs multiple layers as the medical discourses, artistic spectacles, newspaper articles, as well as, personal trajectories of people that changed their sex. By analysing a robust corpus that includes personal photographs, forged documents, personal letters, scientific articles, among others, it provides an understanding of how people could achieve a new gender but negotiation degrees of social and cultural recognition. In contrast with previous literature on the argentine history of sexuality, it points out how studying gender transgressions offers a crucial insight to the meaning of sex and the role it played in the context of the national modernization. By considering both male and female sex change replace the centrality on the body in the affirmation of gender beyond identities.

The event is free but you need to book so we can send you information on how to join.

 

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This event is part of the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology's Discover the Past events series, open to the public and students. To see the full list of events, visit the Discover the Past web page.

The Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck has a distinguished tradition as an international centre of excellence. We are the only university department in London to include archaeologists, classicists and historians investigating every period from prehistory to the early twenty-first century. Join us to discover the past and engage with the present across continents and cultures.

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