B. Diane Lipsett
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199754519
- eISBN:
- 9780199827213
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199754519.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies
Self-restraint or self-mastery may appear to be the opposite of erotic desire. But in three ancient tales of conversion—The Shepherd of Hermas, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and Joseph and Aseneth—the ...
More
Self-restraint or self-mastery may appear to be the opposite of erotic desire. But in three ancient tales of conversion—The Shepherd of Hermas, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and Joseph and Aseneth—the interplay of desire and self-restraint is complex and dynamic, as careful literary analysis shows. This study treats conversion—the marked change in a protagonist’s piety and identity—as in part an effect of story, a function of narrative textures, coherence, and closure. Readings of the three narratives gain nuance through appeals to varied theorists of desire, self-formation, and narrative, including Foucault, psychoanalytic theorists, and the ancient literary critic Longinus. Well grounded in scholarship on Hermas, Thecla, and Aseneth, the closely paced readings sharpen attention to each story, while also advancing discussions of ancient views of the self; of desire, masculinity, and virginity; of the cultural codes around marriage and continence; and of the textual energetics of conversion tales.Less
Self-restraint or self-mastery may appear to be the opposite of erotic desire. But in three ancient tales of conversion—The Shepherd of Hermas, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and Joseph and Aseneth—the interplay of desire and self-restraint is complex and dynamic, as careful literary analysis shows. This study treats conversion—the marked change in a protagonist’s piety and identity—as in part an effect of story, a function of narrative textures, coherence, and closure. Readings of the three narratives gain nuance through appeals to varied theorists of desire, self-formation, and narrative, including Foucault, psychoanalytic theorists, and the ancient literary critic Longinus. Well grounded in scholarship on Hermas, Thecla, and Aseneth, the closely paced readings sharpen attention to each story, while also advancing discussions of ancient views of the self; of desire, masculinity, and virginity; of the cultural codes around marriage and continence; and of the textual energetics of conversion tales.
Arieh Bruce Saposnik
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195331219
- eISBN:
- 9780199868100
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331219.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter begins with the centrality of the Hebrew language in the creation of the Yishuv's culture. Aside from the goal of establishing linguistic unity in a multilingual reality, the language ...
More
This chapter begins with the centrality of the Hebrew language in the creation of the Yishuv's culture. Aside from the goal of establishing linguistic unity in a multilingual reality, the language was also deemed critical in molding the character of Palestine's “Hebrews”—the men and women who were to constitute the new nation. Accent and mannerism were considered reflections of central elements of the new culture, shaping new masculinities and femininities and placing the Hebrews in their new “Oriental” environment. Educational institutions, new popular songs, journalism, fashion, theater, and more were all enlisted in the effort to fashion a new Hebrew‐speaking person in a national Hebrew public sphere. Rooted in part in Jewish mystical tradition in which Hebrew was deemed a cosmically creative force, the Hebrew language emerges as a leading tool in the formation of the nation.Less
This chapter begins with the centrality of the Hebrew language in the creation of the Yishuv's culture. Aside from the goal of establishing linguistic unity in a multilingual reality, the language was also deemed critical in molding the character of Palestine's “Hebrews”—the men and women who were to constitute the new nation. Accent and mannerism were considered reflections of central elements of the new culture, shaping new masculinities and femininities and placing the Hebrews in their new “Oriental” environment. Educational institutions, new popular songs, journalism, fashion, theater, and more were all enlisted in the effort to fashion a new Hebrew‐speaking person in a national Hebrew public sphere. Rooted in part in Jewish mystical tradition in which Hebrew was deemed a cosmically creative force, the Hebrew language emerges as a leading tool in the formation of the nation.
William S. Sax
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195139150
- eISBN:
- 9780199871650
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195139151.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Hinduism
One of the most important dances in the pandav lila culminates with the killing of Arjuna by his son, Nagarjuna. Such parricides are extremely rare in Hindu myth and literature. In this chapter, the ...
More
One of the most important dances in the pandav lila culminates with the killing of Arjuna by his son, Nagarjuna. Such parricides are extremely rare in Hindu myth and literature. In this chapter, the author describes the episode at length, along with its equivalent in the Sanskrit Mahabharata. He also reviews the extensive literature regarding the question of whether or not there is an ”Oedipus Complex” in Hindu culture.Less
One of the most important dances in the pandav lila culminates with the killing of Arjuna by his son, Nagarjuna. Such parricides are extremely rare in Hindu myth and literature. In this chapter, the author describes the episode at length, along with its equivalent in the Sanskrit Mahabharata. He also reviews the extensive literature regarding the question of whether or not there is an ”Oedipus Complex” in Hindu culture.
Joanne Begiato
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781526128577
- eISBN:
- 9781526152046
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526128584
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
Manliness in Britain offers a new account of masculinity in the long nineteenth century: more corporeal and material, more emotional, more cross-class, and less heteronormative than other studies. ...
More
Manliness in Britain offers a new account of masculinity in the long nineteenth century: more corporeal and material, more emotional, more cross-class, and less heteronormative than other studies. Using diverse textual, visual, and material culture sources, it shows that masculinities were produced and disseminated through men’s bodies, very often working-class ones, and the emotions and material culture associated with them. It analyses idealised men who stimulated desire and admiration, including virile boxers, soldiers, sailors, and blacksmiths, brave firemen, and noble industrial workers. Also investigated are unmanly men, like drunkards, wife-beaters, and masturbators who elicited disgust and aversion.
The book disrupts the chronology of nineteenth-century masculinities, since it stretches from the ages of feeling, revolution, and reform, to those of militarism, imperialism, representative democracy, and mass media. It also queers these histories, by recognising that male and female desire for idealised male bodies and the gender attributes they embodied was integral to the success of manliness. Imagined working-class men and their materiality was central to broader ideas of manliness and unmanliness. They not only offered didactic lessons for the working classes and made the labouring ranks appear less threatening, they provide insights into the production of middle-class men’s identities.
Overall, it is shown that this melding of bodies, emotions, and material culture created emotionalised bodies and objects, which facilitated the conveying, reproducing, and fixing of manliness in society. As such, the book will be vital for students and academics in the history of bodies, emotions, gender, and material culture. (248 words)Less
Manliness in Britain offers a new account of masculinity in the long nineteenth century: more corporeal and material, more emotional, more cross-class, and less heteronormative than other studies. Using diverse textual, visual, and material culture sources, it shows that masculinities were produced and disseminated through men’s bodies, very often working-class ones, and the emotions and material culture associated with them. It analyses idealised men who stimulated desire and admiration, including virile boxers, soldiers, sailors, and blacksmiths, brave firemen, and noble industrial workers. Also investigated are unmanly men, like drunkards, wife-beaters, and masturbators who elicited disgust and aversion.
The book disrupts the chronology of nineteenth-century masculinities, since it stretches from the ages of feeling, revolution, and reform, to those of militarism, imperialism, representative democracy, and mass media. It also queers these histories, by recognising that male and female desire for idealised male bodies and the gender attributes they embodied was integral to the success of manliness. Imagined working-class men and their materiality was central to broader ideas of manliness and unmanliness. They not only offered didactic lessons for the working classes and made the labouring ranks appear less threatening, they provide insights into the production of middle-class men’s identities.
Overall, it is shown that this melding of bodies, emotions, and material culture created emotionalised bodies and objects, which facilitated the conveying, reproducing, and fixing of manliness in society. As such, the book will be vital for students and academics in the history of bodies, emotions, gender, and material culture. (248 words)
Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780520295049
- eISBN:
- 9780520967946
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520295049.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Radio
Jack Benny became one of the most influential entertainers of the 20th century - by being the top radio comedian, when the comics ruled radio, and radio was the most powerful and pervasive mass ...
More
Jack Benny became one of the most influential entertainers of the 20th century - by being the top radio comedian, when the comics ruled radio, and radio was the most powerful and pervasive mass medium in the US. In 23 years of weekly radio broadcasts, by aiming all the insults at himself, Benny created Jack, the self-deprecating “Fall Guy” character. He indelibly shaped American humor as a space to enjoy the equal opportunities of easy camaraderie with his cast mates, and equal ego deflation. Benny was the master of comic timing, knowing just when to use silence to create suspense or to have a character leap into the dialogue to puncture Jack’s pretentions. Jack Benny was also a canny entrepreneur, becoming one of the pioneering “showrunners” combining producer, writer and performer into one job. His modern style of radio humor eschewed stale jokes in favor informal repartee with comic hecklers like his valet Rochester (played by Eddie Anderson) and Mary Livingstone his offstage wife. These quirky characters bouncing off each other in humorous situations created the situation comedy. In this career study, we learn how Jack Benny found ingenious ways to sell his sponsors’ products in comic commercials beloved by listeners, and how he dealt with the challenges of race relations, rigid gender ideals and an insurgent new media industry (TV). Jack Benny created classic comedy for a rapidly changing American culture, providing laughter that buoyed radio listeners from 1932’s depths of the Great Depression, through World War II to the mid-1950s.Less
Jack Benny became one of the most influential entertainers of the 20th century - by being the top radio comedian, when the comics ruled radio, and radio was the most powerful and pervasive mass medium in the US. In 23 years of weekly radio broadcasts, by aiming all the insults at himself, Benny created Jack, the self-deprecating “Fall Guy” character. He indelibly shaped American humor as a space to enjoy the equal opportunities of easy camaraderie with his cast mates, and equal ego deflation. Benny was the master of comic timing, knowing just when to use silence to create suspense or to have a character leap into the dialogue to puncture Jack’s pretentions. Jack Benny was also a canny entrepreneur, becoming one of the pioneering “showrunners” combining producer, writer and performer into one job. His modern style of radio humor eschewed stale jokes in favor informal repartee with comic hecklers like his valet Rochester (played by Eddie Anderson) and Mary Livingstone his offstage wife. These quirky characters bouncing off each other in humorous situations created the situation comedy. In this career study, we learn how Jack Benny found ingenious ways to sell his sponsors’ products in comic commercials beloved by listeners, and how he dealt with the challenges of race relations, rigid gender ideals and an insurgent new media industry (TV). Jack Benny created classic comedy for a rapidly changing American culture, providing laughter that buoyed radio listeners from 1932’s depths of the Great Depression, through World War II to the mid-1950s.
Maxine Leeds Craig
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199845279
- eISBN:
- 9780199369614
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199845279.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality, Race and Ethnicity
Why do so many men in the United States refuse to dance? The answer reveals a great deal about masculinity, sexuality, and race. The book examines the past as well as the present. Drawing on research ...
More
Why do so many men in the United States refuse to dance? The answer reveals a great deal about masculinity, sexuality, and race. The book examines the past as well as the present. Drawing on research in sources ranging from military planning documents to boys’ fiction along with interviews, and participant observation, this book analyzes how dance became associated with women rather than men, youths but not adults, and people of color but not whites. The book traces the history of dancing men from1900 when white upper class men were expected to be good dancers, through dance crazes of the 1910s, U.S.O.-sponsored dances during World War II, the stifling climate of the Cold War period, the exuberant release of the 1960s, and the racial fracturing of music and dance cultures of the 1970s. Interviews with Asian, black, Latino, and white, men, aged eighteen to eight-six regarding their childhood, adolescence, and current experiences with dance, reveal how norms of sexuality, masculinity, and cultural assumptions regarding racial identities encourage some men to dance and discourage others. By focusing on dance, an activity that many current definitions of masculinity seem to exclude, the book provides a window on processes of masculine embodiment and racial formation.Less
Why do so many men in the United States refuse to dance? The answer reveals a great deal about masculinity, sexuality, and race. The book examines the past as well as the present. Drawing on research in sources ranging from military planning documents to boys’ fiction along with interviews, and participant observation, this book analyzes how dance became associated with women rather than men, youths but not adults, and people of color but not whites. The book traces the history of dancing men from1900 when white upper class men were expected to be good dancers, through dance crazes of the 1910s, U.S.O.-sponsored dances during World War II, the stifling climate of the Cold War period, the exuberant release of the 1960s, and the racial fracturing of music and dance cultures of the 1970s. Interviews with Asian, black, Latino, and white, men, aged eighteen to eight-six regarding their childhood, adolescence, and current experiences with dance, reveal how norms of sexuality, masculinity, and cultural assumptions regarding racial identities encourage some men to dance and discourage others. By focusing on dance, an activity that many current definitions of masculinity seem to exclude, the book provides a window on processes of masculine embodiment and racial formation.
Justin A. Joyce
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526126160
- eISBN:
- 9781526138743
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526126160.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Gunslinging justice explores American Westerns in a variety of media alongside the historical development of the American legal system to argue that Western shootouts are less overtly “anti-law” than ...
More
Gunslinging justice explores American Westerns in a variety of media alongside the historical development of the American legal system to argue that Western shootouts are less overtly “anti-law” than has been previously assumed. While the genre’s climactic shootouts may look like a putatively masculine opposition to the codified and mediated American legal system, this gun violence is actually enshrined in the development of American laws regulating self-defense and gun possession. The climactic gun violence and stylized revenge drama of seminal Western texts then, seeks not to oppose "the law," but rather to expand its scope. The book’s interdisciplinary approach, which seeks to historicize and contextualize the iconographic tropes of the genre and its associated discourses across varied cultural and social forms, breaks from psychoanalytic perspectives which have long dominated studies of film and legal discourse and occluded historical contingencies integral to the work cultural forms do in the world. From nineteenth century texts like Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and Reconstruction era dime novels, through early twentieth century works like The Virginian, to classic Westerns and more recent films like Unforgiven (1992), this book looks to the intersections between American law and various media that have enabled a cultural, social, and political acceptance of defensive gun violence that is still with us today.Less
Gunslinging justice explores American Westerns in a variety of media alongside the historical development of the American legal system to argue that Western shootouts are less overtly “anti-law” than has been previously assumed. While the genre’s climactic shootouts may look like a putatively masculine opposition to the codified and mediated American legal system, this gun violence is actually enshrined in the development of American laws regulating self-defense and gun possession. The climactic gun violence and stylized revenge drama of seminal Western texts then, seeks not to oppose "the law," but rather to expand its scope. The book’s interdisciplinary approach, which seeks to historicize and contextualize the iconographic tropes of the genre and its associated discourses across varied cultural and social forms, breaks from psychoanalytic perspectives which have long dominated studies of film and legal discourse and occluded historical contingencies integral to the work cultural forms do in the world. From nineteenth century texts like Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and Reconstruction era dime novels, through early twentieth century works like The Virginian, to classic Westerns and more recent films like Unforgiven (1992), this book looks to the intersections between American law and various media that have enabled a cultural, social, and political acceptance of defensive gun violence that is still with us today.
Claire Hines
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780719082269
- eISBN:
- 9781526135865
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719082269.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This is the first book to focus on James Bond’s relationship to the playboy ideal through the sixties and beyond. Examining aspects of the Bond phenomenon and the playboy lifestyle, it considers how ...
More
This is the first book to focus on James Bond’s relationship to the playboy ideal through the sixties and beyond. Examining aspects of the Bond phenomenon and the playboy lifestyle, it considers how ideas of gender and consumption were manipulated to construct and reflect a powerful male fantasy in the post-war era. This analysis of the close association and relations between the emerging cultural icons of James Bond and the playboy is particularly concerned with Sean Connery’s definitive Bond as he was promoted and used by the media. By exploring the connections that developed between Bond and Playboy magazine within a historical framework, the book offers new insights into these related phenomena and their enduring legacy in popular culture.Less
This is the first book to focus on James Bond’s relationship to the playboy ideal through the sixties and beyond. Examining aspects of the Bond phenomenon and the playboy lifestyle, it considers how ideas of gender and consumption were manipulated to construct and reflect a powerful male fantasy in the post-war era. This analysis of the close association and relations between the emerging cultural icons of James Bond and the playboy is particularly concerned with Sean Connery’s definitive Bond as he was promoted and used by the media. By exploring the connections that developed between Bond and Playboy magazine within a historical framework, the book offers new insights into these related phenomena and their enduring legacy in popular culture.
Gul Ozyegin
- Published in print:
- 1937
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814762349
- eISBN:
- 9780814762356
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814762349.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
In stark contrast with their fathers, the young men whose narratives make up this chapter long for identities based on self-expansion and personal enrichment. Mirroring Turkish society's pivot away ...
More
In stark contrast with their fathers, the young men whose narratives make up this chapter long for identities based on self-expansion and personal enrichment. Mirroring Turkish society's pivot away from state-based paternalism, these young men see themselves as embarking on projects of "entrepreneurship of the self" where old ideals of paternal selflessness are replaced by new ideals of individualism, ambition, and pleasure seeking. As these men reject the traditional modes of masculinity modeled by their fathers, they explicitly seek new types of affective relationships with "selfish" women who break from the traditional models of female selflessness. Yet even as these men seek recognition and support for their own self-making from women who are equally ambitious and independent, they cannot completely repudiate the maternal model, longing at the same time for "positive," "selfless" girls who subordinate their desires to the needs of the relationship. The tension of this paradox is felt most acutely by men from conservative and rural family backgrounds whose new identities as upwardly mobile high-achievers necessitate recognition from equally high-achieving women, but who are unable or unwilling to completely relinquish their need for male dominance and control in order to make such relationships successful.Less
In stark contrast with their fathers, the young men whose narratives make up this chapter long for identities based on self-expansion and personal enrichment. Mirroring Turkish society's pivot away from state-based paternalism, these young men see themselves as embarking on projects of "entrepreneurship of the self" where old ideals of paternal selflessness are replaced by new ideals of individualism, ambition, and pleasure seeking. As these men reject the traditional modes of masculinity modeled by their fathers, they explicitly seek new types of affective relationships with "selfish" women who break from the traditional models of female selflessness. Yet even as these men seek recognition and support for their own self-making from women who are equally ambitious and independent, they cannot completely repudiate the maternal model, longing at the same time for "positive," "selfless" girls who subordinate their desires to the needs of the relationship. The tension of this paradox is felt most acutely by men from conservative and rural family backgrounds whose new identities as upwardly mobile high-achievers necessitate recognition from equally high-achieving women, but who are unable or unwilling to completely relinquish their need for male dominance and control in order to make such relationships successful.
Louis Moore
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041341
- eISBN:
- 9780252099946
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041341.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Sport and Leisure
At its heart, I Fight for a Living is a book about black men who came of age in the Reconstruction and early Jim Crow era--a time when the remaking of white manhood was at its most intense, placing ...
More
At its heart, I Fight for a Living is a book about black men who came of age in the Reconstruction and early Jim Crow era--a time when the remaking of white manhood was at its most intense, placing vigor and physicality at the center of the construction of manliness. The book uses the stories of black fighters’ lives, from 1880 to 1915, to explore how working-class black men used prizefighting and the sporting culture to assert their manhood in a country that denied their equality, and to examine the reactions by the black middle class and white middle class toward these black fighters. Through these stories, the book explores how the assertion of this working-class manliness confronted American ideas of race and manliness. While other works on black fighters have explored black boxers as individuals, this book seeks to study these men as a collective group while providing a localized and racialized response to black working-class manhood. It was a tough bargain to risk one’s body to prove manhood, but black men across the globe took that chance.Less
At its heart, I Fight for a Living is a book about black men who came of age in the Reconstruction and early Jim Crow era--a time when the remaking of white manhood was at its most intense, placing vigor and physicality at the center of the construction of manliness. The book uses the stories of black fighters’ lives, from 1880 to 1915, to explore how working-class black men used prizefighting and the sporting culture to assert their manhood in a country that denied their equality, and to examine the reactions by the black middle class and white middle class toward these black fighters. Through these stories, the book explores how the assertion of this working-class manliness confronted American ideas of race and manliness. While other works on black fighters have explored black boxers as individuals, this book seeks to study these men as a collective group while providing a localized and racialized response to black working-class manhood. It was a tough bargain to risk one’s body to prove manhood, but black men across the globe took that chance.
Sergio A. Lussana
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780813166940
- eISBN:
- 9780813167848
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813166940.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This is the first book-length study of enslaved men and masculinity in the antebellum South. It examines the close relationships shared among enslaved men and argues that the lives of these men were ...
More
This is the first book-length study of enslaved men and masculinity in the antebellum South. It examines the close relationships shared among enslaved men and argues that the lives of these men were intertwined. Across the antebellum South, enslaved men created an all-male subculture, engaging in homosocial recreational pursuits such as drinking, gambling, wrestling, and hunting. Through these activities, they constructed markers of status, identity, and masculinity and forged lasting friendships. The book argues that homosocial company was integral to the gendered identity and self-esteem of enslaved men. The emotional landscape they created together offered them a vital mutual support network through which to resist the horrors of slavery. Through each other, enslaved men created a secret world that defied and subverted the authority of the slaveholder. The author argues that enslaved men, together, refused to be emasculated.Less
This is the first book-length study of enslaved men and masculinity in the antebellum South. It examines the close relationships shared among enslaved men and argues that the lives of these men were intertwined. Across the antebellum South, enslaved men created an all-male subculture, engaging in homosocial recreational pursuits such as drinking, gambling, wrestling, and hunting. Through these activities, they constructed markers of status, identity, and masculinity and forged lasting friendships. The book argues that homosocial company was integral to the gendered identity and self-esteem of enslaved men. The emotional landscape they created together offered them a vital mutual support network through which to resist the horrors of slavery. Through each other, enslaved men created a secret world that defied and subverted the authority of the slaveholder. The author argues that enslaved men, together, refused to be emasculated.
Sergio Rigoletto
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780748654543
- eISBN:
- 9781474406406
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748654543.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Italian cinema has traditionally used the trope of an inadequate man in crisis to reflect on the country’s many social and political upheavals. Masculinity and Italian Cinema takes the 1970s as an ...
More
Italian cinema has traditionally used the trope of an inadequate man in crisis to reflect on the country’s many social and political upheavals. Masculinity and Italian Cinema takes the 1970s as an especially instructive period for rethinking the concept of male crisis in Italian cinema. The 1970s were a decade of innovation and challenging work for Italian cinema, one that was marked by radicalism and heated debates about the function of cinema as a political medium and as a mass cultural phenomenon. This book shows that these were years in which a wide-ranging redefinition of masculinity took place. The book discusses how masculinity functioned in several films of the 1970s as a charged allegory for the many socio-political lacerations of the Italian nation, and as a site of conflict and radical interrogation of ideas about gender and sexuality.Less
Italian cinema has traditionally used the trope of an inadequate man in crisis to reflect on the country’s many social and political upheavals. Masculinity and Italian Cinema takes the 1970s as an especially instructive period for rethinking the concept of male crisis in Italian cinema. The 1970s were a decade of innovation and challenging work for Italian cinema, one that was marked by radicalism and heated debates about the function of cinema as a political medium and as a mass cultural phenomenon. This book shows that these were years in which a wide-ranging redefinition of masculinity took place. The book discusses how masculinity functioned in several films of the 1970s as a charged allegory for the many socio-political lacerations of the Italian nation, and as a site of conflict and radical interrogation of ideas about gender and sexuality.
Kenneth Cohen
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781501705496
- eISBN:
- 9781501714214
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501705496.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
They Will Have Their Game explores how sports, drinking, gambling, and theater produced a sense of democracy while also reinforcing racial, gender, and class divisions in early America. Drawing on ...
More
They Will Have Their Game explores how sports, drinking, gambling, and theater produced a sense of democracy while also reinforcing racial, gender, and class divisions in early America. Drawing on unparalleled research into the personal papers of the investors behind sporting events, Cohen demonstrates how investors, participants, and professional performers from all sorts of backgrounds saw these "sporting" activities as stages for securing economic and political advantage over others. The book tracks the evolution of this fight for power from 1760 to 1860, showing how elites gradually conceded their hopes for exclusive gentility and embraced a more democratic and commercial mass sporting culture while maintaining power by agreeing to limit access according to race and gender as well as incubating respect for wealth and offices won on the allegedly open and level playing fields of electoral “races” and the “game” of business. Compelling narratives about individual participants illustrate the negotiations by which sporting discourse and experience created opportunities for self-assertion across class, racial, and gender boundaries even as they also normalized economic and political inequality along those lines. In the end, Cohen’s arguments question the influence of ideas such as “gentility” and “respectability” in the standard narrative of commercial popular culture, and put men like P.T. Barnum at the end instead of the beginning of the process, unveiling a new take on the creation of the white male republic of the early nineteenth century that puts sporting activities at the center rather than the margins of economic and political history.Less
They Will Have Their Game explores how sports, drinking, gambling, and theater produced a sense of democracy while also reinforcing racial, gender, and class divisions in early America. Drawing on unparalleled research into the personal papers of the investors behind sporting events, Cohen demonstrates how investors, participants, and professional performers from all sorts of backgrounds saw these "sporting" activities as stages for securing economic and political advantage over others. The book tracks the evolution of this fight for power from 1760 to 1860, showing how elites gradually conceded their hopes for exclusive gentility and embraced a more democratic and commercial mass sporting culture while maintaining power by agreeing to limit access according to race and gender as well as incubating respect for wealth and offices won on the allegedly open and level playing fields of electoral “races” and the “game” of business. Compelling narratives about individual participants illustrate the negotiations by which sporting discourse and experience created opportunities for self-assertion across class, racial, and gender boundaries even as they also normalized economic and political inequality along those lines. In the end, Cohen’s arguments question the influence of ideas such as “gentility” and “respectability” in the standard narrative of commercial popular culture, and put men like P.T. Barnum at the end instead of the beginning of the process, unveiling a new take on the creation of the white male republic of the early nineteenth century that puts sporting activities at the center rather than the margins of economic and political history.
Andrew Mangham and Daniel Lea (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786940520
- eISBN:
- 9781789629170
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786940520.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Investigations of male potency and the ‘ability to perform’ have long been mainstays of social, political and artistic discourse and have provoked spirited and partisan declarations about what it is ...
More
Investigations of male potency and the ‘ability to perform’ have long been mainstays of social, political and artistic discourse and have provoked spirited and partisan declarations about what it is to be a man. This interdisciplinary collection considers the tensions that have developed between the historical privilege often ascribed to the male and the vulnerability to which his body is prone. Using a variety of historical and literary approaches, the essays in this work consider the critical ways in which medicine’s interactions with literature reveal vital clues about the ways sex, gender and identity are constructed through treatments of a range of pathologies, including deformity, venereal disease, injury, nervousness and sexual difference. The relationships between male medicine and ideals of potency and masculinity are searchingly explored through a range of sources, including African American slave fictions, southern gothic, early modern poetry, Victorian literature and the modern novel.Less
Investigations of male potency and the ‘ability to perform’ have long been mainstays of social, political and artistic discourse and have provoked spirited and partisan declarations about what it is to be a man. This interdisciplinary collection considers the tensions that have developed between the historical privilege often ascribed to the male and the vulnerability to which his body is prone. Using a variety of historical and literary approaches, the essays in this work consider the critical ways in which medicine’s interactions with literature reveal vital clues about the ways sex, gender and identity are constructed through treatments of a range of pathologies, including deformity, venereal disease, injury, nervousness and sexual difference. The relationships between male medicine and ideals of potency and masculinity are searchingly explored through a range of sources, including African American slave fictions, southern gothic, early modern poetry, Victorian literature and the modern novel.
Chris Coffman
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474438094
- eISBN:
- 9781474449694
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474438094.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
By reading written and visual artefacts of Gertrude Stein’s life, Gertrude Stein’s Transmasculinity reframes earlier scholarship to argue that her gender was transmasculine and that her masculinity ...
More
By reading written and visual artefacts of Gertrude Stein’s life, Gertrude Stein’s Transmasculinity reframes earlier scholarship to argue that her gender was transmasculine and that her masculinity was positive rather than a self-hating form of false consciousness. This book considers ways Stein’s masculinity was formed through her relationship with her feminine partner, Alice B. Toklas, and her masculine homosocial bonds with other modernists in her network. This broadens out Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s account of “male homosocial bonding” to include all masculine persons, opening up the possibility of examining Stein’s relationship to Toklas; masculine women such as Jane Heap; and men such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, and Carl Van Vechten. The Introduction and first four chapters focus on surfacings of Stein’s masculinity within the visual and the textual: in others’ paintings and photographs of her person; her hermetic writings from the first three decades of the twentieth century; and her self-packaging for mass consumption in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933). Whereas the chapter on The Autobiography underscores Toklas’s role in the formation of Stein’s masculinity and success as a modernist, the final three register the vicissitudes of the homosocial bonds at play in her friendships with Picasso, Hemingway, and Van Vechten. The Coda, which cross-reads Stein’s Everybody’s Autobiography (1937) with the media attention two museum exhibits about her attracted between 2011 and 2012, points to possibilities for future work on the implications of her masculine homosocial bonds with Vichy collaborator Bernard Fäy.Less
By reading written and visual artefacts of Gertrude Stein’s life, Gertrude Stein’s Transmasculinity reframes earlier scholarship to argue that her gender was transmasculine and that her masculinity was positive rather than a self-hating form of false consciousness. This book considers ways Stein’s masculinity was formed through her relationship with her feminine partner, Alice B. Toklas, and her masculine homosocial bonds with other modernists in her network. This broadens out Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s account of “male homosocial bonding” to include all masculine persons, opening up the possibility of examining Stein’s relationship to Toklas; masculine women such as Jane Heap; and men such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, and Carl Van Vechten. The Introduction and first four chapters focus on surfacings of Stein’s masculinity within the visual and the textual: in others’ paintings and photographs of her person; her hermetic writings from the first three decades of the twentieth century; and her self-packaging for mass consumption in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933). Whereas the chapter on The Autobiography underscores Toklas’s role in the formation of Stein’s masculinity and success as a modernist, the final three register the vicissitudes of the homosocial bonds at play in her friendships with Picasso, Hemingway, and Van Vechten. The Coda, which cross-reads Stein’s Everybody’s Autobiography (1937) with the media attention two museum exhibits about her attracted between 2011 and 2012, points to possibilities for future work on the implications of her masculine homosocial bonds with Vichy collaborator Bernard Fäy.
Kirsten Day
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474402460
- eISBN:
- 9781474422055
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474402460.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This short conclusion reiterates the main thesis of Cowboy Classics: that Westerns help us grapple with identity issues in a culturally relevant way while providing the comfort of chronological ...
More
This short conclusion reiterates the main thesis of Cowboy Classics: that Westerns help us grapple with identity issues in a culturally relevant way while providing the comfort of chronological distancing, much as Homer and Virgil’s epics did for their societies. As a result, the Western has proven remarkably resilient, with the past decade seeing a number of big-budget films, both originals and remakes, as well as successful TV series. And just as the characterization of epic heroes shaped notions of idealized masculinity in antiquity, the Western hero remains a pervasive model for ideal manhood in America more generally, as is evident both in other film genres – from science fiction and fantasy to detective and gangster films to post-apocalyptic narratives – and in real world scenarios where men are engaged in heroic action on behalf of society (or want to be seen as such). Indeed, the model of masculinity Westerns provide is so deeply ingrained in the American cultural consciousness that it in turn colors our reception of ancient epic, which is itself now often filtered through a “Western” lens.Less
This short conclusion reiterates the main thesis of Cowboy Classics: that Westerns help us grapple with identity issues in a culturally relevant way while providing the comfort of chronological distancing, much as Homer and Virgil’s epics did for their societies. As a result, the Western has proven remarkably resilient, with the past decade seeing a number of big-budget films, both originals and remakes, as well as successful TV series. And just as the characterization of epic heroes shaped notions of idealized masculinity in antiquity, the Western hero remains a pervasive model for ideal manhood in America more generally, as is evident both in other film genres – from science fiction and fantasy to detective and gangster films to post-apocalyptic narratives – and in real world scenarios where men are engaged in heroic action on behalf of society (or want to be seen as such). Indeed, the model of masculinity Westerns provide is so deeply ingrained in the American cultural consciousness that it in turn colors our reception of ancient epic, which is itself now often filtered through a “Western” lens.
Joanne Begiato
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781526128577
- eISBN:
- 9781526152046
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526128584.00006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
This introduction offers a rich overview of the scholarship on the histories of the body, emotions, and material culture as they relate to gender. It explains how Manliness in Britain develops this ...
More
This introduction offers a rich overview of the scholarship on the histories of the body, emotions, and material culture as they relate to gender. It explains how Manliness in Britain develops this work to understand how bodies, emotions, and materiality helped construct masculinities in the long nineteenth century. It shows that a queer history approach, combined with theories of emotional bodies and emotional objects, offers a new way to think about manliness and unmanliness. The introduction is divided into three sections. It summarises histories relating to ‘being’ a man, focusing on the embodied qualities of manliness and on self-control, the primary means by which men were supposed to achieve idealised manly behaviour. It then assesses the scholarship relating to three domains in which manliness was understood to be performed and tested: war, home, and work. (135 words)Less
This introduction offers a rich overview of the scholarship on the histories of the body, emotions, and material culture as they relate to gender. It explains how Manliness in Britain develops this work to understand how bodies, emotions, and materiality helped construct masculinities in the long nineteenth century. It shows that a queer history approach, combined with theories of emotional bodies and emotional objects, offers a new way to think about manliness and unmanliness. The introduction is divided into three sections. It summarises histories relating to ‘being’ a man, focusing on the embodied qualities of manliness and on self-control, the primary means by which men were supposed to achieve idealised manly behaviour. It then assesses the scholarship relating to three domains in which manliness was understood to be performed and tested: war, home, and work. (135 words)
Joanne Begiato
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781526128577
- eISBN:
- 9781526152046
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526128584.00008
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
This chapter demonstrates that unmanliness was written onto ill-formed, unappealing bodies and faces, which prompted disgust, fear, and shame. It shows that adult men were instructed on how to avoid ...
More
This chapter demonstrates that unmanliness was written onto ill-formed, unappealing bodies and faces, which prompted disgust, fear, and shame. It shows that adult men were instructed on how to avoid unmanliness through emotionalised bodies: failing, uncontrolled, unattractive bodies created by unchecked appetites and bad habits such as drunkenness, and sexual vices. Men were thus taught that the inability to master one’s self caused literal physical, mental, and moral disintegration. Lack of self-control became more dangerous in the nineteenth century as excessive passions, bodily appetites, and feelings were increasingly pathologised as causes of disease and insanity. Responsibility was placed upon the male individual for failing to exert enough moral control to avoid his illness. The discussion of the relationship between unmanliness, bodies, and emotions that follows reveals the inherent paradox of masculine identity, since many unmanly behaviours were also those which, in a managed form, were central to the performance of normative masculinity. Thus, men had to navigate considerable ambiguities in performing their gender. The chapter shows how unmanliness was especially complicated for those men whose bodies were lacking, due to disability, age, or infirmity. (184 words)Less
This chapter demonstrates that unmanliness was written onto ill-formed, unappealing bodies and faces, which prompted disgust, fear, and shame. It shows that adult men were instructed on how to avoid unmanliness through emotionalised bodies: failing, uncontrolled, unattractive bodies created by unchecked appetites and bad habits such as drunkenness, and sexual vices. Men were thus taught that the inability to master one’s self caused literal physical, mental, and moral disintegration. Lack of self-control became more dangerous in the nineteenth century as excessive passions, bodily appetites, and feelings were increasingly pathologised as causes of disease and insanity. Responsibility was placed upon the male individual for failing to exert enough moral control to avoid his illness. The discussion of the relationship between unmanliness, bodies, and emotions that follows reveals the inherent paradox of masculine identity, since many unmanly behaviours were also those which, in a managed form, were central to the performance of normative masculinity. Thus, men had to navigate considerable ambiguities in performing their gender. The chapter shows how unmanliness was especially complicated for those men whose bodies were lacking, due to disability, age, or infirmity. (184 words)
Joanne Begiato
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781526128577
- eISBN:
- 9781526152046
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526128584.00010
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
This chapter demonstrates how cultural accounts of men in the home inculcated feelings that produced, reinforced, and disseminated notions of masculinity. It shows that while manly men were ...
More
This chapter demonstrates how cultural accounts of men in the home inculcated feelings that produced, reinforced, and disseminated notions of masculinity. It shows that while manly men were considered integral to its success they were nevertheless envisioned outside the home, fighting for it, defending it, or providing for it. As such, this chapter addresses men’s absence from home through the popular motifs of men leaving and returning, dreaming of home, and their ‘absent presence’; that is objects which acted as reminders of men who were away from home for long periods. When print and visual culture imagined men within the home, it was as catalysts for a ‘happy’ or ‘unhappy’ home, predominantly fashioned through their performance of key emotions. Men could produce ‘happy’ homes through their provision, frugality, kindness, love, and affection. Or their disruptive unmanly behaviours resulted in ‘unhappy’ homes, sites of domestic violence. The chapter focuses on representations of working-class men because middle-class imaginations often scrutinised their emotional and sexual performances in the home, since it was deemed central to a successful society and nation. As such, they also functioned to remind middle-class men what they should aspire to and avoid being. (194 words)Less
This chapter demonstrates how cultural accounts of men in the home inculcated feelings that produced, reinforced, and disseminated notions of masculinity. It shows that while manly men were considered integral to its success they were nevertheless envisioned outside the home, fighting for it, defending it, or providing for it. As such, this chapter addresses men’s absence from home through the popular motifs of men leaving and returning, dreaming of home, and their ‘absent presence’; that is objects which acted as reminders of men who were away from home for long periods. When print and visual culture imagined men within the home, it was as catalysts for a ‘happy’ or ‘unhappy’ home, predominantly fashioned through their performance of key emotions. Men could produce ‘happy’ homes through their provision, frugality, kindness, love, and affection. Or their disruptive unmanly behaviours resulted in ‘unhappy’ homes, sites of domestic violence. The chapter focuses on representations of working-class men because middle-class imaginations often scrutinised their emotional and sexual performances in the home, since it was deemed central to a successful society and nation. As such, they also functioned to remind middle-class men what they should aspire to and avoid being. (194 words)
Joanne Begiato
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781526128577
- eISBN:
- 9781526152046
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526128584.00011
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
This chapter examines representations of working men’s bodies. Section one explores the nobility assigned to the muscular body, interrogated through the imagined blacksmith and navvy. The second ...
More
This chapter examines representations of working men’s bodies. Section one explores the nobility assigned to the muscular body, interrogated through the imagined blacksmith and navvy. The second section addresses the role of heroism, another appealing quality, primarily through miners, firemen, and life-boat men. Such strong and appealing working-men offered a more comforting vision of working-class masculinity than that in which they were politically and socially dangerous. Kindness was attributed to both brawn and brave stereotypes, taming the muscular and reckless body. This was not their only function for a middle-class audience, since the same combination of alluring physical and emotional qualities also rendered the working-class male body desirable as a manly ideal. The chapter then shows that the working classes created and disseminated their own highly emotional and material manifestation of working-class manliness on the material culture of trades unions and friendly societies. However, the emotions associated with them were subtly different and deployed in different ways. For middle-class men, the attractive working man was reassuring and admirable, for working-class men he was a measure of their right to be included in the civic polity. (185 words)Less
This chapter examines representations of working men’s bodies. Section one explores the nobility assigned to the muscular body, interrogated through the imagined blacksmith and navvy. The second section addresses the role of heroism, another appealing quality, primarily through miners, firemen, and life-boat men. Such strong and appealing working-men offered a more comforting vision of working-class masculinity than that in which they were politically and socially dangerous. Kindness was attributed to both brawn and brave stereotypes, taming the muscular and reckless body. This was not their only function for a middle-class audience, since the same combination of alluring physical and emotional qualities also rendered the working-class male body desirable as a manly ideal. The chapter then shows that the working classes created and disseminated their own highly emotional and material manifestation of working-class manliness on the material culture of trades unions and friendly societies. However, the emotions associated with them were subtly different and deployed in different ways. For middle-class men, the attractive working man was reassuring and admirable, for working-class men he was a measure of their right to be included in the civic polity. (185 words)
