Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

Ben Wise, professor in American History, author of William Alexander Percy: The Curious Life of a Mississippi Planter and Sexual Freethinker (University of North Carolina Press, 2012), who has been the recipient of many awards, including the C. Vann Woodward Prize for best dissertation in southern history, 2009; CLAS teacher of the year, 2010; UF History’s John Mahon Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Ben is sharing for discussion and debate elements from his forthcoming book (enclosed here with his prefatory note), which remains as he writes “in quandary mode.”

Folk Devils: A History of Drinkers, Dancers, Lovers and Queers in God’s Country:

A Book Project in Quandary Mode”

Discussants will be:

David Sehat, Professor of History, Georgia State University, author of The Myth of American Religious Freedom, which won the Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians.

Trysh Travis, UF professor in Women’s Studies, CLAS Associate Dean for the Humanities, and author of The Language of the Heart: Twelve-Step Recovery from Alcoholics Anonymous to Oprah Winfrey (UNC Press, 2009) and Feminists on Drugs: A History (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming).

Email Prof. Nancy Hunt (nrhunt@ufl.edu) for Zoom link and paper.