Contemporary Western societies are currently witness to a “crisis of masculinity” but also to an intriguing diversification of images of masculinity. Once relatively stable regimes of masculine gender representation appear to have been replaced by a wider spectrum of varieties of masculine “lifestyles” taken up by the media and the market, to produce new and immensely flexible forms consumerised gender hegemony. The essays in Subverting Masculinity concentrate on contemporary film, literature and diverse forms of popular culture. The essays show that the subversion of traditional images of masculinity is both a source of gender contestation, but may equally be susceptible to assimilation by new hegemonic configurations of masculinity. Subverting Masculinity maps out the ongoing relevance of gender politics in contemporary culture, but also raises the question of increasingly unclear distinctions between hegemonic and subversive versions of masculinity in contemporary cultural production. Subverting Masculinity will be of interest to students and teachers of gender, cultural, film and literary studies.
The authors concentrate on masculinities in contemporary film, literature and diverse forms of popular culture and argue that the subversion of traditional images of masculinity is both a source of gender contestation and may equally be susceptible to assimilation by new hegemonic configurations of masculinity.
Victims of the Book uncovers a long-neglected but once widespread subgenre: the fin-de-siècle novel of formation in France. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, social commentators insistently characterized excessive reading as an emasculating illness that afflicted French youth. Novels about and geared toward adolescent male readers were imbued with a deep worry over young Frenchmen’s masculinity, as evidenced by titles like Crise de jeunesse (Youth in Crisis, 1897), La Crise virile (Crisis of Virility, 1898), La Vie stérile (A Sterile Life, 1892), and La Mortelle Impuissance (Deadly Impotence, 1903). In this book, François Proulx examines a wide panorama of these novels, as well as polemical essays, pedagogical articles, and medical treatises on the perceived threats posed by young Frenchmen’s reading habits. Fin-de-siècle writers responded to this pathologization of reading with a profusion of novels addressed to young male readers, paradoxically proposing their own novels as potential cures. In the early twentieth century, this corpus was critically revisited by a new generation of writers. Victims of the Book shows how André Gide and Marcel Proust in particular reworked the fin-de-siècle paradox to subvert cultural norms about literature and masculinity, proposing instead a queer pact between writer and reader.
Publisher Fact Sheet Under Construction provides an illuminating portrait of south Korean gender construction in the 1990s--a decade that saw the return to civilian rule, a loosening of censorship & social control, & the emergence of a full-blown consumer culture.
Masculinity is one of the key issues at stake in contemporary writing and gender studies. In their novels, Michael Chabon and Tom Wolfe both consistently make masculinity a prominent thematic and ideological concern. This study is the first full length scholarly work to take their work and their treatment of masculinity as its focus. How do these American authors critique the representation of masculinity within popular culture in Wonder Boys, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and Summerland, A Man in Full and The Bonfire of the Vanities? How do popular images of masculinity function for individual men and the way they experience their masculinities? A Dangerous Fiction investigates the ways in which Chabon and Wolfe strip masculinity of any illusion of an essential nature and expose it as something highly culturally dependent and explains how these novels suggest to understand masculinity in the contemporary world.
This book presents chapters that have been brought together to consider the multitude of ways that post-2000 popular music impacts on our cultures and experiences. The focus is on misogyny, toxic masculinity, and heteronormativity. The authors of the chapters consider these three concepts in a wide range of popular music styles and genres; they analyse and evaluate how the concepts are maintained and normalized, challenged, and rejected. The interconnected nature of these concepts is also woven throughout the book. The book also seeks to expand the idea of popular music as understood by many in the West to include popular music genres from outside western Europe and North America that are often ignored (for example, Bollywood and Italian hip hop), and to bring in music genres that are inarguably popular, but also sit under other labels such as rap, metal, and punk.
The text analyses identities within virtual on-screen environments. Investigating regions in Second Life, it explores topical issues of the body in virtual space, nature and mythology in virtual environments, and the key arguments surrounding normative and subversive representations of gender, sexuality and subversion in screen-based environments.
Gestures of Music Theater explores examples of Song and Dance as performative gestures that entertain and affect audiences. The chapters interact to reveal the complex energies of performativity. In experiencing these energies, music theatre is revealed as a dynamic accretion of active, complex and dialogical experiences.
Reimagining Black Masculinities: Race, Gender, and Public Space addresses how Black masculinities are created, negotiated, and contested in public spaces, focusing on how theory meets praxis when mobilizing for social change. Contributors disentangle complexities of the Black experience and reimagine the radical progressive work required for societal health and wellbeing, forming a mental picture of what the world has the potential to be without excluding current realities for Black boys and men, civic manhood, maleness, and the fluidity of masculinities. These realities are acknowledged and interrogated across private and public contexts, media, education, occupation, and theoretical perspectives. This book encourages readers to reenvision social identity as an ongoing phenomenon, asserting that collective vision informs action and collective action informs possibilities for peace and freedom in the world around us. Scholars of communication, gender studies, and race studies will find this book particularly interesting.
Learn the latest practical—and bisexually affirmative—approaches to helping bisexual clients Clinical work with bisexual clients has conceptually shifted beyond the exclusive emphasis on either straight or lesbian and gay issues. There are still, however, too few psychotherapists who provide affirmative psychotherapy specific to bisexual concerns. Affirmative Psychotherapy with Bisexual Women and Bisexual Men addresses the issues of bisexuals with an accepting and affirmative perspective, providing therapists with the latest viewpoints, strategies, and research to effectively treat bisexual clients. Leading authorities with affirmative-to-bisexuals perspectives discuss problems specific to bisexuals and their lifestyles, with an eye toward providing practical, effective therapy. Unique bisexual lifestyle concerns are examined, such as transgender issues, polyamory, older bisexual women and men, and cultural differences, while providing an emphasis on cultivating well-being and a sense of community in bisexual clients. Affirmative Psychotherapy with Bisexual Women and Bisexual Men sensitively avoids the double standard long held by therapists clinically treating heterosexual or lesbian and gay individuals, showing that an affirmative viewpoint is valid and crucial for the effective treatment of bisexuals. This source clearly explains practical strategies and discusses the latest research on bisexual issues such as age, culture, heterosexual and bisexual mixed couples, and the polyamorous lifestyle with appropriate acceptance and understanding. The book also explores useful ways to develop successful health and support services specific to bisexual needs. Topics in Affirmative Psychotherapy with Bisexual Women and Bisexual Men include: affirmative psychotherapy techniques specific to bisexual women and bisexual men need for validation of bisexuality ways for clients to come to terms with their bisexuality practical value—and shortcomings—of the main therapeutic schools in providing effective psychotherapy transgender bisexuality, with illustrative case studies needs and issues of African-American bisexual clients bisexual aging issues counseling heterosexual spouses of bisexual women and men therapy approaches for clients who are bisexual and polyamorous recognizing and addressing the specific needs of different sub-groups of bisexual people and more! Affirmative Psychotherapy with Bisexual Women and Bisexual Men is a crucial addition to the literature of bisexual psychotherapy and is invaluable to counselors, psychotherapists, marriage and family therapists, social workers, psychiatrists, sex therapists, researchers, and educators in the fields of psychology, sociology, anthropology, sexuality, sex education, adolescent and adult development, and community mental health.
