Login
Lecture, Barnard's Inn Hall, Tuesday, 10 Nov 2026 - 13:00
“A Mystery Still”: Historical (Trans) Gender Variance and James “Miranda” Barry
Need help registering?
This lecture focuses on the intense posthumous speculation about the reputedly female body of the high-raking nineteenth-century military surgeon James Barry (1789?-1865). The instabilities in the factual Barry’s self-construction and the sensational disclosures after his death underpin Victorian, twentieth century and contemporary representations of the re-imagined Barry’s slippery gender/sex identities.
How has this inflected pronoun choice and visual depiction? Does the way Barry has been represented shift across time, so that he serves as both a boundary crosser and a boundary marker of gender/sex paradigms?
Support Gresham
Gresham College has offered an outstanding education to the public free of charge for over 400 years. Today, Gresham College plays an important role in fostering a love of learning and a greater understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Your donation will help to widen our reach and to broaden our audience, allowing more people to benefit from a high-quality education from some of the brightest minds.
