Amy E. Tanner pursued a series of ventures on the margins of the discipline of psychology from 1895 through the 1910s. As a midwesterner and a woman, she found herself denied opportunities at both research universities and elite women's colleges, spending the most visible phase of her career as G. Stanley Hall's assistant at Clark University. A narrative of Tanner's life furnishes more than a glimpse at the challenges faced by women scholars in the past. As an investigator engaged with the debate over the mental variability of the sexes, an active class passer in the name of social reform, and a spiritualist debunker, her broad interests illuminate how broadly the proper scope of the new psychology could be constituted. Throughout her writing, Tanner offered an embedded, situated account of knowledge production.