Sophia DeLeonibus

Sophia DeLeonibus is a historian of gender, sex, and sexuality in the modern United States. Her research examines the making of gender and sexual norms in twentieth-century American culture, science, and politics.

 

Her first book project, titled The Age of Identity: Gender, Sexuality, and Childhood in the United States, explores the intellectual and cultural history of the term and concept of “gender identity,” from its origins in midcentury sexology to its contested place in current-day politics about queer and transgender rights. It tracks two interrelated developments: first, how the sexological vocabulary of gender identity provided a new means for social scientists, psychoanalysts, and psychiatrists to diagnose, prevent, and treat childhood gender nonconformity and, second, how the language of gender identity was divorced from its scientific origins and refashioned by feminist, queer, and transgender activists and thinkers. The Age of Identity argues that gender identity has been central to cultural, social scientific, and political debates about childhood, the family, and sexuality in the twentieth-century United States, from midcentury debates about juvenile delinquency to contemporary debates about transgender youth. In doing so, the project situates the recent emergence of “antigender” politics in the United States as the latest chapter in a longer story of how contestations over gender, sexuality, and childhood identity have shaped American life.

 

Sophia received her PhD with distinction from Yale University and holds a BA in History and Politics from Grinnell College. Her dissertation was awarded the George Washington Egleston Historical Prize for Outstanding Dissertation in American History.