Synopses & Reviews
Across history, the ideas and practices of male identity have varied much between time and place: masculinity proves to be a slippery concept, not available to all men, sometimes even applied to women. This book analyses the dynamics of "masculinity" as both an ideology and lived experience - how men have tried, and failed, to be "Real Men."
Review
'The essays in What Is Masculinity? insightfully demonstrate that its titular question is inseparable from the questions of what were manhood, manliness and allied notions such as virility and gentlemanliness, leading up to contemporary scholarly conceptions of hegemonic masculinity and diverse masculinities. These stimulating explorations take us broadly and deeply through a wide range of times and places. They importantly challenge historians specifically, and the rest of us more generally, to push through the boundaries of traditional scholarship to reach more complex and nuanced understandings.'
- Harry Brod, Editor of The Making of Masculinities and Theorizing Masculinities, and Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at the University of Northern Iowa, USA
Synopsis
What is masculinity? Looked at across time - from antiquity to the modern day - the contours of 'manliness' take on an intriguing complexity. As the various contributors to this volume demonstrate, the ideas and practices of male identity have varied considerably over time and place: masculinity proves to be a slippery concept, one not available to all men, and one sometimes even applied to certain women. By looking at masculinity over time, this ground-breaking book, now published for the first time in paperback, presents a variety of new perspectives on the nature of masculinity, its social and political functions, and the methods by which historians and others might seek to analyse it. Each author provides both a case study of what 'masculinity' means (or fails to mean) in a specific historical moment, and contributes to a wider collective analysis of the changing historical dynamics to male identity. Overall, the book provides a key methodological landmark in the study of gender history.
About the Author
JOHN H. ARNOLD is Professor of Medieval History at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. He works on various aspects of medieval culture and modern historiography.
SEAN BRADY isLecturer in Modern British History at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. He is an historian of modern British history andhis Masculinity and Male Homosexuality in Britain, 1861-1913 has been internationally influential on the field. Both he and John H. Arnold are convening editors of Palgrave Macmillan's series Genders and Sexualities in History.
Table of Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction; J.H.Arnold and S.Brady
PART I: PARADIGMS AND NOMENCLATURE
The History of Masculinity: an Outdated Concept?; J.Tosh
Can the Hegemon Speak? Reading Masculinity through Anthropology; D.F.Janssen
The Whig Interpretation of Masculinity? Honour and Sexuality in Late Medieval Manhood; C.Fletcher
Masculinity without Conflict: Noblemen in Eighth and Ninth-Century Francia; R.Stone
PART II: MASCULINITY AND HEGEMONY
Masculinities in Early Hellenistic Athens; H.Berg
Masculinity as a World Historical Category of Analysis; S.Yarrow
Hegemonic Masculinities? Assessing Change and Process of Change in Elite Masculinity, 1700-1900; H.French
and M.Rothery
Masculinity and Fatherhood in England c. 1760-1830; J.Bailey
PART III: MATURING AND ADULTHOOD
Athenian Pederasty and the Construction of Masculinity; T.K.Hubbard
An Orchard, a Love Letter, and Three Bastards: the Formation of Adult Male Identity in a Fifteenth-Century Family; R.E.Moss
'To make a Man without Reason': Examining Manhood and Manliness in Early Modern England; J.Jordan
'Boys, Semi-Men and Bearded Scholars': Maturity and Manliness in early Nineteenth-Century Oxford; H.Ellis
PART IV: DOMESTICITIES
St. Francis of Assisi and the Making of Settlement Masculinity, 1883-1914; L.Matthews-Jones
Homes Fit for Homos: Joe Orton, Masculinity, and the Domesticated Queer; M.Cook
Three Faces of Fatherhood as a Masculine Category: Tyrants, Teachers, and Workaholics as 'Responsible Family Men' during Canada's Baby Boom; R.Rutherdale
PART V: MODERN FRONTIERS
Cow Boys, Cattle Men, and Competing Masculinities on the Texas Frontier; J.M.Moore
Valorising Samurai Masculinity through Biblical