Ernest Hemingway’s place in American letters seems guaranteed: a winner of Nobel and Pulitzer prizes, Hemingway has long been a fixture in high school and college curricula. Just as influential as his famed economy of style and unflappable heroes, however, is his public persona. Hemingway helped create an image of a masculine ideal: sportsman, brawler, hard drinker, serial monogamist, and world traveler. Yet his iconicity has also worked against him. Because Hemingway is often dismissed by students and scholars alike for his perceived misogyny, instructors might find themselves wondering how to handle the impossibly over-determined author or even if they should include him on their syllabi at all.
With these concerns in mind, the presenters on this panel, three of whom contributed to the collection Teaching Hemingway and Gender, introduce both students and scholars to Hemingway’s surprisingly multivalent treatment of gender and sexuality.
A state-of-the-field presentation by Debra A. Moddelmog and an evocative discussion of LGBTQ characters and themes in Hemingway's neglected short fiction by Krista Quesenberry bookend the panel. Pamela L. Caughie's presentation relates her experiences teaching The Garden of Eden to women's studies students, finding the novel useful for exploring the various conceptions of gender that spanned the twentieth century. Crystal G. Doss examines how Hemingway's female characters resist traditional female "genres," the domestic, the sentimental, and even the New Woman and flapper in favor of a more complex identity.