An Illustrated Lecture with Jennifer McGillan, Archivist at the Augustus C. Long Library of Columbia University Medical Center

Date: Tuesday, March 3rd
Time: 8pm
Admission: $8 ( Tickets here )
Location: Morbid Anatomy Museum, 424 Third Avenue, Brooklyn 11215

Tonight’s highly illustrated talk will comprise a tour of the papers of psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Ethel Spector Person (1934-2012), director of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (1981-1991). Person was best known for her research done with Lionel Ovesey on the psychosexual roots of transsexuality and transvestism, distinguishing core gender identity from gender-role identity, and gender identity from sexual preference. She also conducted important studies of fantasy, love, sex, power and the places in which those concepts overlap and intertwined, such as the practice of BDSM. Unlike her contemporaries, Person stepped outside the clinical setting to conduct research, and while doing so amassed a fascinating collection of materials drawn from the transsexual, transvestite, and BDSM communities, including newsletters, newspapers, catalogs and amateur fiction.

Jennifer McGillan has been the archivist at the Augustus C. Long Library of Columbia University Medical Center since 2007; before coming to CUMC she worked at the Jewish Historical Society of MetroWest (Whippany, New Jersey), Susquehanna University (Selinsgrove, PA), Hunt Library of Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA), and the Morgan Library (New York). She earned a JD from New York Law School in 2012, an MLS with a concentration in Archives from the University of Pittsburgh in 2003, and a BA in English from Davidson College in 1997. Her research interests are digital humanities and pirates, and her life goals include going to Mongolia to sleep in a yurt and attending a race at Talladega.