Histories of the Transgender Child

Jules Gill-Peterson is assistant professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.

• PrefaceIntroduction: Toward a Trans-of-Color Critique of Medicine1. The Racial Plasticity of Gender and the Child2. Before Transsexuality: The Transgender Child from the 1900s to the 1930s3. Sex in Crisis: Intersex Children in the 1950s and the Invention of Gender4. From Johns Hopkins to the Midwest: Transgender Childhood in the 1960s5. Transgender Boyhood, Race, and Puberty in the 1970sConclusion: How to Bring Your Kids Up TransAcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsNotesIndex

"Histories of the Transgender Child is a tour de force contribution to transgender studies, tracing little-noticed pathways from the past toward convergences that increasingly take center stage in the next field. An elegant combination of sophisticated theorization with equally sophisticated attention to archival and historical materials, this is one of the best books in trans studies in recent years."-Susan Stryker, University of Arizona"Jules Gill-Peterson excavates the history of medicine, introducing readers to a century’s worth of gender nonconforming youth. This remarkable book is not merely a backward glance; it offers an urgent call to reimagine trans as a form of self-knowledge children can hold and for an ethics of care that focuses on affirmation."-Tey Meadow, author of Trans Kids"Meticulously researched and compellingly argued, this book is a welcome addition to a number of fields, including trans of color critique, childhood studies, and queer and trans history."-C. Riley Snorton, author of Black on Both Sides"This work fills a gap in queer history; older trans, intersex, and nonbinary people who work through the dense, theoretical prose may find their experiences reflected in Gill-Peterson’s history, and younger ones may discover that their “uncovering of a century of untold stories” provides a tether to an underexplored legacy."-Publishers Weekly"You have to start somewhere. Indeed, few things begin in a vacuum: you need an idea, then experiments and practice to create a masterpiece. Nothing magically just appears. And in the new book “Histories of the Transgender Child” by Jules Gill-Peterson,you’ll see that that’s true, too, about knowledge and change." -South Florida Gay News"For children’s literature scholars who work on gender and sexuality, this book is essential reading for its insights that transgender children are not new and that binary sex and gender are extremely recent and fragile ideas reliant on a dehumanizing, racially coded conceptualization of the child as plasticity." -The Lion and the Unicorn