About the Book
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'.
Table of Contents:
Illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction; J.H.Arnold & S.Brady PART I: PARADIGMS AND NOMENCLATURE The History of Masculinity: an Outdated Concept?; J.Tosh Can the Hegemon Speak?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 & 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 Language: Christianity, Oscar Wilde, and Natsume Soseki's novel Kokoro ; K.Miyazaki 'Proper Government and Discipline': Family Religion and Masculine Authority in Nineteenth-Century Canada; N.Christie Punters and their Prostitutes: British Soldiers, Masculinity, and maisons tolérées in theFirst World War; C.Makepeace Conclusion Masculinities, Histories, and Memories; V.Jeleniewski Seidler
About the Author :
JOHN H. ARNOLD Professor of Medieval History, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK
JOANNE BAILEY Senior Lecturer in History, Oxford Brookes University, UK
HENRIK BERG Lecturer in Gender Studies, Uppsala University, Sweden
SEAN BRADY Lecturer in Modern British and Irish History at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK
NANCY CHRISTIE McGill University, Montreal, Canada
MATT COOK Senior Lecturer in History and Gender Studies, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK
HEATHER ELLIS Lecturer and Researcher in British History, Centre for British Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
CHRISTOPHER FLETCHER Chargé de Recherche, the Laboratoire de Médiévistique Occidentale, University of Paris I, France
HENRY FRENCH Professor of Social History, University of Exeter, UK
THOMAS K. HUBBARD Professor of Classics, University of Texas, Austin, USA
DIEDERIK F. JANSSEN Independent Scholar, the Netherlands
JENNIFER JORDAN Postdoctoral Research Fellow, the University of Plymouth, UK
CLARE MAKEPEACE Doctoral Candidate in Modern British History, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK
LUCINDA MATTHEWS-JONES Lecturer in Modern British History, Queen's University, Belfast, UK
KASUMI MIYAZAKI Professor of Comparative Literature and History, Wako University, Japan
JACQUELINE M. MOORE Professor of History, Austin College in Sherman, Texas, USA
RACHEL E. MOSS Chargé de Recherche, the Laboratoire de Médiévistique Occidentale, University ofParis I, France
MARK ROTHERY Postdoctoral Research Assistant, Northampton University, UK
ROBERT RUTHERDALE Department of History and Philosophy, Algoma University in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada
VICTOR JELENIEWSKI SEIDLER Professor of Social Theory, Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK
RACHEL STONE Departmental Library Cataloguer, Department of Coins and Medals, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK
JOHN TOSH Professor of History, Roehampton University, London, UK
SIMON YARROW Lecturer in Medieval History, School of History and Cultures, University of Birmingham, UK
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
'[...] Informative, original, and challenging to the historian of masculinity of any period (although possibly not of any region) to make this an invaluable collection of scholarship and seminal in its own right, potentially helping to define the field and its direction for years to come.' - Jessica Meyer, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
