University of Chicago researchers Chase Joynt and Kristen Schilt discovered never-published research that changes accepted views of transgender communities in the 1950s. Now their research is debuting at Tribeca Film Festival as the documentary short "Framing Agnes."
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The film "Framing Agnes" is set to debut at the Tribeca Film Festival this week. (Aubree Bernier Clarke)
Cindy Dampier
Contact Reporter
Chicago Tribune
Chase Joynt and Kristen Schilt might not fit your definition of swashbuckling explorers — he’s a filmmaker and post-doctoral fellow at the University of Chicago, she’s a U. of C. sociology professor.
But when the pair embarked on a research project that involved one of the seminal case studies in the study of transgender people, they found themselves digging in dusty boxes, sifting through reams of old paper stuffed into a dead professor’s unsorted archive, and finally peeking inside a rusty file drawer, Indiana Jones-style, to uncover a never-before-seen part of the past. “You can’t make this stuff up,” says Joynt.
What Joynt and Schilt discovered was a treasure trove of notes, part of the work of sociologist Harold Garfinkel, on one of Garfinkel’s best-known interviews with a research subject: a trans woman called Agnes, whom he interviewed in 1958.
Now, as part of a joint U. of C. fellowship, they have turned that discovery into a documentary film, “Framing Agnes,” that has snared a spot at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival, where it will debut Sunday — and is turning a piece of history on its head.
“Agnes’ case is very well known in the field of sociology,” says Schilt, “and has been taken up in the same way that case studies by Sigmund Freud have been taken up, like the Wolf Man or Dora. And because it was such an integral part of sociology and the anchor of the first theory of gender in sociology, Agnes has always seemed very singular; she was one person being written about.”
The revelation in the rusty file drawer was that, in spite of popular perception, Agnes’ case was not singular. In fact, Garfinkel had made a study of eight transgender people in Los Angeles in the late 1950s — and his interviews revealed how those people were a part of a supportive transgender community, and how they interacted with the wider world of the medical establishment, workplaces and everyday life.
“When you encounter the set of interviews as a whole,” says Joynt, “you get a sense of what a world looks like for gender nonconforming people in L.A. in the 1950s. It really deteriorates the idea that people were living in isolation without any resources. While that was true for some, it reveals … this incredibly robust network of support and people who were navigating systems on their own through resourcefulness and creativity.”
Agnes, who had come to Garfinkel as part of her quest to undergo gender reassignment surgery at UCLA, was 19 in 1958. Born with a penis, she had always felt herself to be a woman, and had been living as a woman, with a job as a typist and a boyfriend who knew that she was a transgender person. “For sociologists,” says Schilt, “what the case represented is this idea that gender is socially constructed as opposed to being biological essential. What sociologists found interesting was that someone who was assigned male at birth could create this life as a woman. In 1958, that kind of blew people’s minds.”
As society became more open to recognition of transgender people, Agnes’ tale continued to hold great resonance. “For many trans studies people, Agnes is kind of the folk hero,” says Schilt. “There’s this excitement about this example of someone who was able to do this at 19 years old, and is able to get what she wants out of it. That was pretty rare in 1958.”
With the addition of the cases Schilt and Joynt discovered, layers of detail have been added to those experiences: tales of “parties with 200 lesbians in the Hollywood Hills,” everyday details of struggling to find or keep employment, and a surprising amount of support. “There was a whole network of trans women who would show up for each other in the hospital after someone had had surgery,” says Joynt, “and bring food and snacks, posing as sisters and cousins. They were saying that if someone is trans and lonely, it’s because they’re making a choice, because we’re here and we’re ready to show up. It really revealed how they built these communities.”
Schilt and Joynt, who had “made peace with the fact that we might not find anything” about Agnes in Garfinkel’s overflowing archive, were overjoyed when in 2017 they uncovered new accounts of midcentury trans life. “We went in the first time and thought, ‘We’re going to find something,’ ” says Joynt, “and then over time it was like, ‘Maybe we’re not going to find something.’ When we finally gained access to the drawer and saw what was inside, it was this overwhelming moment.”
“I probably screamed,” says Schilt. “It was like we had really won the archival lottery.”
The discovery changed how they saw their project, raising comparisons between issues faced by the trans community today and those faced by the research subjects, and sparking a new idea about how to present their work. Though they do plan to publish a book, “Conceptualizing Agnes: Exemplary Cases and the Disciplines of Gender,” the two chose to present their work in a 19-minute film that is a hybrid documentary style. “Framing Agnes” employs trans actors Zachary Drucker, known for work on the Amazon series “Transparent,” Angelica Ross of “Pose,” Silas Howard and Max Wolf Valerio to recreate the historical research subjects on screen. Joynt portrays the Garfinkel character.
The presence of the contemporary actors allows the film to focus on the juxtaposition between today’s trans community and the community Joynt and Shilt uncovered in their research. “We gave them character summaries and outlines of the people they would be portraying,” says Schilt, “but we really wanted them to embody these people and bring them to life. Watching them was a beautiful experience.”
Joynt hopes that the film, which is building up a healthy roster of upcoming festival appearances, allows audiences not only to discover a richer past, but shift their perspective on the stories of transgender people today.
“For so long,” he says, “the cultural landscape has been dominated by narratives about trans people that focus on the transition moment, that move from a sort of gender unrest toward a kind of gender resolve. And for us, ‘Framing Agnes’ is an opportunity not to ignore the transition but to say that trans-ness and stories about gender nonconformity are far more complex.”
Schilt agrees: “While social progress is not linear,” she says, “this is this really amazing moment where we get to think about the current context of trans-ness in culture, alongside these historical makings.”
And, she admits, for a sociology professor, it’s also a moment to take in her new career in film. “This was so out of my realm,” she says, “that it took a few weeks to sink in, ‘Wow, this is huge.’ And now I’m so excited, I just can’t wait.”
Twitter @csdampier
