The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom

The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom explores how the fantasies of genre, marketing, and children can never fully cloak the queerness lurking within the plucky families designed for American viewers’ comic delight. Queer readings of family sitcoms demolish myths of yesteryear, demonstrating the illusion of American sexual innocence in television’s early programs and its lasting consequences in the nation’s self-construction, as they also allow fresh insights into the ways in which more recent programs negotiate new visions of sexuality while indebted to previous narrative traditions. Tison Pugh thoroughly explores six specific family sitcoms to illustrate how issues of sexuality intersect with other critical concerns of their respective periods and cultures

Jews in Medieval England: Teaching Representations of the Other

This volume examines the teaching of Jewishness within the context of medieval England. It covers a wide array of academic disciplines and addresses a multitude of primary sources, including medieval English manuscripts, law codes, philosophy, art, and literature, in explicating how the Jew-as-Other was formed. Chapters are devoted to the teaching of the complexities of medieval Jewish experiences in the modern classroom. Jews in Medieval England: Teaching Representations of the Other also grounds medieval conceptions of the Other within the contemporary world where we continue to confront the problematic attitudes directed toward alleged social outcasts.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/books/1039/thumbnail.jp

Gender, Vulgarity, And The Phantom Debates Of Chaucer\u27S Merchant\u27S Tale

Chaucer\u27s Merchant\u27s Tale has long been criticized for its apparently disjunctive themes and style, yet by reading it as a series of five debates concerning gender and marriage, its organic unity comes into sharper focus. The primary sections of the tale-the marriage encomium, Justinus and Placebo\u27s argument, May\u27s wedding night, the mythological interlude of Pluto and Proserpina, and the tale\u27s fabliau resolution-each highlight various aspects of the classical and medieval debate tradition, as they also foreground considerations of male and female desires within the marital realm. A sixth debate emerges in Chaucer\u27s metatextual construction of the pilgrims\u27 varying views of gender and marriage. As the masculinist arena of debate is regendered through the tale\u27s unfolding, its fabliau humor envisions a world in which women can debate as persuasively as men-even through their silence

Innocence Heterosexuality And The Queerness Of Children\u27S Literature

Innocence, Heterosexuality, and the Queerness of Children\u27s Literature examines distinguished classics of children\u27s literature both old and new-including L. Frank Baum\u27s Oz books, Laura Ingalls Wilder\u27s Little House series, J. K. Rowling\u27s Harry Potter novels, Lemony Snicket\u27s A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Stephenie Meyer\u27s Twilight series-to explore the queer tensions between innocence and heterosexuality within their pages. Pugh argues that children cannot retain their innocence of sexuality while learning about normative heterosexuality, yet this inherent paradox runs throughout many classic narratives of literature for young readers. Children\u27s literature typically endorses heterosexuality through its invisible presence as the de facto sexual identity of countless protagonists and their families, yet heterosexuality\u27s ubiquity is counterbalanced by its occlusion when authors shield their readers from forthright considerations of one of humanity\u27s most basic and primal instincts. The book demonstrates that tensions between innocence and sexuality render much of children\u27s literature queer, especially when these texts disavow sexuality through celebrations of innocence. In this original study, Pugh develops interpretations of sexuality that few critics have yet ventured, paving the way for future scholarly engagement with larger questions about the ideological role of children\u27s literature and representations of children\u27s sexuality