“I just don’t want to die without a few scars”: Medieval Fight Clubs, Masculine Identity, and Public (Dis)order

Sponsoring Organization(s)

Center for Medieval Studies, Fordham Univ.

Organizer Name

Allison Adair Alberts, Steven Bruso, Heather Blatt

Organizer Affiliation

Fordham Univ., Fordham Univ., Florida International Univ.

Presider Name

Steven Bruso

Paper Title 1

Student Violence at the University of Oxford

Presenter 1 Name

Andrew E. Larsen

Presenter 1 Affiliation

Marquette Univ.

Paper Title 2

Chivalry and Public Disorder in Thirteenth-Century Florence

Presenter 2 Name

Peter W. Sposato

Presenter 2 Affiliation

Univ. of Rochester

Start Date

9-5-2013 10:00 AM

Session Location

Valley II 201

Description

Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club dramatizes group combat as a means for creating and performing masculine identity. Though composed hundreds of years after the last medieval tournament, Palahniuk’s 1996 novel parallels a phenomenon similar to that governing conduct in medieval martial games. Such martial games posed a serious threat to public order, as Juliet Barker and Juliet Vale have argued, and this session builds on their work by extending analysis of medieval martial conduct to include the topic of masculine identity: how does an identity predicated on violence conflict with or bleed into the public sphere? This panel that explores fresh questions on the intersection of masculine identity, violence, and public order.

Signed: Allison Adair Alberts, Steven Bruso, Heather Blatt (co-organizers)