Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex

Acknowledgments

vii acknowledgments I have received enthusiastic support for this project from friends, colleagues , and family. I am indebted to the readers at the Journal of American History and David Nord for their comments on “Impossible Hermaphrodites: Intersex in America, 1620–1960.” I also appreciate the almost instantaneous and enormously helpful evaluations I received for the article that I published in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, “Divergence or Disorder? The Politics of Naming Intersex,” which is the epilogue of this book. Special thanks go to David Iris Cameron, Milton Diamond, Alice Dreger, Katrina Karkazis, Emi Koyama, Bo Laurent, Iain Morland, Bob Perlman, David Sandberg, Paul Vasey, and Eric Vilain. Among these, Alice Dreger must receive special mention. I am deeply thankful for her thorough, perceptive reading of the entire book and her unreserved encouragement. Others have talked with me about the project or read portions of the manuscript and offered their suggestions and critique. I would like to thank the Pacific Northwest Early American Reading Group, the students in my Sex and Medical Ethics class at the University of Oregon, Lee Arbogast , Susan Armeny, Linda Barnes, Diane Baxter, Andy Burstein, Cynthia Eller, Tom Foster, Lynn Fujiwara, Richard Godbeer, Nancy Isenberg, Lauren Kessler, Suzanne Kessler, Catherine Kudlick, Susan Lantz, Ernesto Martinez, Christina Matta, Joanne Meyerowitz, Julie Novkov, Lynn Nyhart, Catherine Johnson-Roehr, Susan Johnson-Roehr, Robert Nye, Judith Raiskin, Ellen Scott, Do Mi Stauber, Susan Stryker, Kate Sullivan, Jennifer Terry, Kerry Wilson, Mac Wilson, and Al Young. I would also like to thank audiences and panelists at the Kinsey Institute Conference, the American Association for the History of Medicine, the Western Association of Women Historians, and the Organization of American Historians Meeting as well as listeners at Cornell University, University of Miami, viii Acknowledgments University of Oregon, Oregon State University, Southern Oregon University , and Mother Kali’s Bookstore in Eugene, Oregon. I have received financial support from the University of Oregon Humanities Center and the Center for the Study of Women in Society. Arlene Shaner of the New York Academy of Medicine helped a great deal while I was researching the book and subsequently as I tracked down sources or needed permissions to reprint pictures. Thanks also to Sara Brownmiller at the University of Oregon, Shawn C. Wilson and Catherine Johnson-Roehr at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, Brenda Marson at Cornell University, and Florence Gillich at Yale University’s Medical Historical Library. My mother, Pamela Tamarkin Reis, deserves a prize. She meticulously read and refined every chapter more than once, even though the topic is far from her own field of study. My children, Sam and Leah Reis-Dennis, were troopers. Living in a house where books having to do with bodies and sex proliferate can be challenging for teenagers. Once my daughter did a Google image search for my name in the school library and was taken aback when pictures of ambiguous genitalia from an article I had published appeared as well. As teens though, they can certainly appreciate issues of autonomy and consent, and I hope that my work on this project has benefited them in some way. My husband, Matthew Dennis, kept me thinking like a historian, always prodding me to set intersex issues in a broader context and to consider the bigger picture of American history. And of course, Matt, Sam, and Leah often lured me away from my desk to take breaks, play, and focus on the present, for which I am enormously grateful. ...