Faculty Research: Dr. Karl Miller and Dr. Janet Davis at Humanities Texas Teachers Institute on 1960s America

Some very cool activities from our faculty this summer: Dr. Karl Miller and Dr. Janet Davis are both participants in the Humanities Texas Institute for Texas Teachers, this year's theme being "America in the 1960s." Dr. Davis gave a presentation yesterday on "Influential Women in the Sixties," and Dr. Miller is today speaking about "Music in the 1960s." Both also led primary source workshops in the afternoons.We just wish we could attend, too!

Announcement: Dr. Ramzi Fawaz Lectures on "The Fantastic Four"

Join us this Friday, February 7, for a lecture by Dr. Ramzi Fawaz (Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin) entitled "'Flame On!': Nuclear Families, Unstable Molecules, and the Queer History of 'The Fantastic Four.'" The talk will take place from 3:00-4:30 in Burdine 214.In this lecture, Dr. Fawaz argues that "The Fantastic Four" offered a key contribution to queer literary history in the 1960s by using the mutated bodies of its four heroes to depict the transformation of the normative types of the 1950s nuclear family - the breadwinning father, doting wife, and bickering male siblings - into icons of 1960s radicalism. These icons included the liberal feminist, the left-wing intellectual, the political activist, and the potential queer or neurotic, all non-normative characters the four came to embody.This event is sponsored by the Center for Women and Gender Studies, the Children, Youth, and Gender Research Cluster, and the Department of American Studies.