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This chapter explores a white, working-class, southern evangelical lesbian journey through academia, and examines the varied meanings of “nontraditional” in the academy. A discussion of labor and the disproportionate role women perform in contingent, nurturing, and supportive roles suggests that in spite of feminist revolutions, the labor of nontraditional women continues to bolster tradition in academia. Although written as a personal story, this narrative highlights broad challenges faced by faculty and students who enter higher education as first-generation learners. Embracing the struggles faced by students and faculty with nontraditional identities can be a transformative approach to pedagogy, introducing students to the historical role of privilege in U.S. society.

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Atlanta, Georgia, and Charlotte, North Carolina, serve as urban centers of the Southeast and archetypal New South cities. In the last decades of the twentieth century, city and corporate leaders in Atlanta often welcomed the growth of gay visibility and the resulting queer tourism. While Charlotte’s leaders promoted growth and longed to be like Atlanta, they rebuffed queer visibility. For many queer people, Atlanta lived up to an oft-repeated maxim; it was a city too busy to hate. Charlotte’s pattern of significant and sustained growth throughout the twentieth century led to its well-chosen Chamber of Commerce slogan, labeling the city as a great place to make money, which proved true for many queer people. Still, this financial success did not equal support. City politicians often set aside opportunities to exploit the burgeoning gay market while rejecting Charlotte’s queer citizens wholesale.

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