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Doctor Alan Hart: X-Ray Vision in the Archive

A historical examination of online and data-based identity, this peer reviewed journal article demonstrates how modern identities emerge into visibility through a process of technological imaging, shaped by marketing voices and the field of medicine. This research participates in the internationally expanding field of Somatechnics by bringing to light the historically significant but largely overlooked figure of Doctor Alan Hart. Contrary to most accounts dating the first sex reassignment surgeries to Germany in the late 1920’s or to the high profile celebrity Christine Jorgensen in 1952, Alan Hart’s request for medical intervention in 1917 marks the first case in the United States of an individual requesting medical procedures to live as the opposite gender. As a gender pioneer, Hart’s careful crafting of his public persona predates the contemporary construction of identity through online social networking sites. As an author who destroyed all personal artefacts except for his published volumes, the sparse archival traces have left behind active debates by identity-based communities claiming this historical figure as their own. Developed through original archival materials at the Lewis and Clark College library in Oregon and funded by the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Rochester, New York, this work has been presented at the Trans-What? Conference in Berlin (Aarhus and Plymouth Universities, 2013), the TransSomatechnics Conference at Simon Fraser University (May 2008, Canada), through visiting lectures in the Graduate Media Studies programme at City University, New York (2009) and by a radio interview broadcast by KBOO radio (October 2009, Oregon) that encapsulated the embracing of Hart as an unconventional public figure.