The creation and legacy of the sitcom that transformed queer representation in American television.The sitcom Will & Grace (1998–2006, 2017–20) shifted the media landscape and its treatment of queer themes by starring an openly gay protagonist, Will Truman, on primetime network television. Will, along with his best friend Grace Adler and their constant companions Jack McFarland and Karen Walker, engaged in many stereotypical sitcom shenanigans imbued with ...

An illuminating study of Rowling's novels that broke new ground while adhering to traditional narrative formulasHarry Potter and Beyond explores J. K. Rowling's beloved best-selling series and its virtuoso reimagining of British literary traditions. Weaving together elements of fantasy, the school-story novel, detective fiction, allegory, and bildungsroman, the Harry Potter novels evade simplistic categorization as children's or fantasy literature. Because...

The author of Queer Chivalry presents a biographical study of the celebrity writer "rich with insight into [his] literary and cinematic achievements" ( Publishers Weekly).Truman Capote's legacy is in many ways defined by his complex relationship with Hollywood. In Truman Capote: A Literary Life at the Movies, Tison Pugh explores the author and his literature through a cinematic lens, weaving elements of Capote's biography—including his fl...

What is the difference between a star born in the South and a “southern star”? In Southerners Acting Southern, Tison Pugh answers this intriguing question, pondering the ways in which some performers from the South metamorphose into southern stars by accentuating their geographic and cultural roots as key aspects of their star personas.Many celebrities, particularly actors, seek to transcend their hometown roots in favor of achieving an “all-American” appeal, but some star...

How is literature like a game, and how are games like literature? Engagements with Literary Gaming examines the cultural significance of these two converging forms, defining the concept of literary gaming for a new narrative, ludic, and media landscape.Narratives have long featured ludic themes, and games are increasingly incorporating narrative structures. As a critical concept, ludonarratology encourages readers and players to consider the meanings behind ludic stories a...

Acclaimed for centuries as the “Father of English Literature,” Geoffrey Chaucer enjoys widespread and effusive praise for his classic Canterbury Tales—and rightfully so. Still, even the greatest of authors cannot claim perfection, and so Bad Chaucer: The Great Poet’s Greatest Mistakes in the Canterbury Tales analyzes his various missteps, missed opportunities, and other blunders in this peerless masterpiece. From a vexing catalog of trees in the Knight’s Tale to ...

Regardless of his own sexual orientation, L. Frank Baum’s fictions revel in queer, trans, and other transgressive themes. Baum’s life in the late 1800s and early 1900s coincided with the rise of sexology in the Western world, as a cascade of studies heightened awareness of the complexity of human sexuality. His years of productivity also coincided with the rise of children’s literature as a unique field of artistic creation. Best known for his Oz series, Baum produced a staggering number o...

The United States of Medievalism contemplates the desires, dreams, and contradictions inherent in experiencing the Middle Ages in a nation that is so temporally, spatially, and at times politically removed from them. The European Middle Ages have long influenced the national landscape of the United States through the medieval sites that permeate its self-announced republican landscapes and cities. Today, American-built medievalisms continue to shape the nation’s communities, colla...

Teaching Games and Game Studies in the Literature Classroom offers practical suggestions for educators looking to incorporate ludic media, ranging from novels to video games and from poems to board games, into their curricula. Across the globe, video games and interactive media have already been granted their own departments at numerous larger institutions and will increasingly fall under the purview of language and literature departments at smaller schools. This volume considers ...

Within the realm of American culture and its construction of its citizenry, geography, and ideology, who are southerners and who are queers, and what is the South and what is queerness? Queering the South on Screen addresses these questions by examining the intersections of queerness, regionalism, and identity depicted in film, television, and other visual media about the South during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.Southern queers on screen often reflect the fant...

Often viewed as theologically conservative, many theatrical works of late medieval and early Tudor England nevertheless exploited the performative nature of drama to flirt with unsanctioned expressions of desire, allowing queer identities and themes to emerge. Early plays faced vexing challenges in depicting sexuality, but modes of queerness, including queer scopophilia, queer dialogue, queer characters, and queer performances, fractured prevailing restraints. Many of these plays were prod...

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