The Queer Genders of Medievalism in the U.S. South

Sponsored by the UNC Greensboro English Department, Class of 1952 Professorship, and the Women's and Gender Studies Program. Dr. Tison Pugh is a professor of English at the University of Central Florida and the author of ten books, including Precious Perversions: Humor, Homosexuality, and the Southern Literary Canon and Chaucer's (Anti-) Eroticisms and the Queer Middle Ages. For the American South, the myth of chivalric masculinity dominates the cultural and historical landscape, creating a vision of southern men in the mutually mythologized histories of the Middle Ages and the South as lands and times of chivalric honor. Yet what are the elisions and evasions inherent in this gendered tradition? In this lecture, Tison Pugh explores the paradoxes of the modern United States South turning to the medieval past for models of gender, detailing the inherent instability of the cultural archetype.

Those coming from off-campus who are not familiar with UNCG can park in the Oakland Parking deck (located just off of Spring Garden St. in between Forest and Kenilworth Streets). The Education Building is located at the corner of Stirling St. and Spring Garden St., right across from the Oakland parking deck (also across from Yum-Yum Ice Cream and diagonal from the Bojangles). You can plot your exact route here: https://parking.uncg.edu/access/access.html