Jules Gill-Peterson
Associate Professor and Diversity Champion, Johns Hopkins University
Charles M. and Martha Hitchcock Lectures
April 30, 2026 — 5:30 pmEugene Jarvis Auditorium, Grimes Engineering Center — UC Berkeley Campus
Graduate Division, Gender Equity Resource Center, Transgender Student Wellness Initiative, Multicultural Community Center, Queer Alliance Resource Center, Othering & Belonging Institute, UC Berkeley's Graduate Student Sexuality-Gender Workshop
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About this lecture
This lecture chronicles the remarkable life of Frances Thompson, who was born male and into slavery in Maryland in the 1830s. She was one of a handful of women who transitioned sex while enslaved, and she fled to Memphis after escaping bondage during the Civil War. In 1866, she was violently assaulted during the infamous Memphis Riots, and her testimony to Congress proved pivotal to the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment. Ten years later, she was arrested for crossdressing and outed to the nation, allowing reactionaries to spin an aggrieved tale of deception with which they mercilessly prosecuted the end of Reconstruction. Based on new research into Thompson’s life, and other black women like her, this talk will argue the right to transition is plainly part of the history and tradition of the Fourteenth Amendment—and that the Supreme Court’s perspective on this issue is utterly wrong. It will also suggest that the historical origins of political transphobia in American life concern the unfinished struggles of Reconstruction.
About Jules Gill-Peterson
Jules Gill-Peterson is an award-winning historian and the author of two books: Histories of the Transgender Child (2018) and A Short History of Trans Misogyny (2025). She has held fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, the Mellon Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies. From 2021-2024, she also served as a general co-editor of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Gill-Peterson was honored with the Chancellor’s Distinguished Research Award from the University of Pittsburgh in 2020, in recognition of her pathbreaking work on the history of transgender youth. Her work has been translated into seven languages, and it has been adapted for radio, television, and documentary film. She currently teaches at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Her next book, Transgender Liberalism: The Making of a Middle Class, will be published by Harvard University Press.
Gill-Peterson’s scholarship has played a pivotal role as transgender healthcare and legal recognition have become the subject of intense political attack. She co-authored two amicus briefs filed on behalf of US historians to the Supreme Court in signal transgender rights cases: US v Skrmetti (2025) and West Virginia v B.P.J. (2026). She has also advised and addressed clinicians in transgender healthcare around the world. Gill-Peterson has been widely interviewed and profiled, from Wired magazine to the New York Times, and she is the narrator of Framing Agnes (dir. Chase Joynt, 2021), an award-winning documentary film on transgender history that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
Wheelchair accessible and service dogs welcome. For disability-related accommodation, email [email protected] or call 510-643-9164 4-7 days in advance of the lecture.