Lauren Fried

Title of Dissertation: Design as Cure? Treating the Male to Female Trans Body through Strategies of Design in Medical Discourse, 1890 to 1970

Is it possible, or even permissible, to discuss bodies as designed? What are the implications of writing a history of a designed ‘object’ that is able to speak back, to narrate its own history and design in ways that the objects history of design as a discipline is more accustomed to dealing with, for example buildings, chairs or clothing, are obviously not able to do? Where can we locate design in a history of the body, and what about locating the body in a history of design?

These issues have informed my dissertation, which looks at the interactions between male to female trans people and medical discourse during a period in which medical technology and definitions of sex underwent significant permutations. These histories detail specific enactments of bodily design which took place within the varied practices of plastic surgery, endocrinology and psychiatry.

Through theoretical discussions and re-readings of medical sources, all grounded in a design historical approach, I examine how design can be considered as remedial, embodied and negotiated. Using medical journals and text books from the early twentieth century, contemporary transgender studies and patient testimony, ‘Design as Cure?' details an early history of the medical treatment for trans people. Addressing questions of agency and animate design, it considers new paradigms of scholarship within the medical humanities.