Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Carry The Fire: Intersections Of Apocalypse, Primitivism, And Masculinity In American Literature, 1945-2000, Dylan Barth

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines American apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic texts from 1945-2000 in order to consider the varying ways that masculinity has been constructed in relation to the imagined primitive. The first chapter provides an overview of studies in apocalypse, primitivism, and masculinity to lay the foundation for the in-depth, critical analyses that follow. The second chapter provides an operational definition of American post-apocalyptic fiction as well as a survey of American post-apocalyptic fiction that includes George Stewart's Earth Abides, Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon, Robert Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer, and David …

Heterosexuality, Homosexuality And Masculinity, Evan Johnson

InPrint

No abstract provided.

“Hey Skinny, Your Ribs Are Showing”: The Fitness Industry Of Charles Atlas And Masculinity In Early Twentieth-Century United States, Conor Heffernan

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

About the author

Conor Heffernan is a senior of History and Political Science at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. Conor has a keen interest in health and fitness and American culture in the 20th century. He hopes to further his studies into the history of physical culture in the future.

Of Men, Roles And Rules: Nanni Moretti’S Habemus Papam, Davide Zordan

Journal of Religion & Film

This paper focuses on Nanni Moretti’s Habemus Papam and in particular on its representation of the interaction between religion and masculinity. In the light of gender studies, it asks which idea of masculinity, but also of fatherhood, Catholicism and its system of authority tend to encourage according to the film, and it assesses the opportunities for change that the film imaginatively explores. The analysis of the idea of masculinity investigates in particular the distinction between person and office, the necessity of which is dramatically illustrated in the film.

Go With Peace Jamil - Affirmation And Challenge Of The Image Of The Muslim Man, Sofia Sjö

Journal of Religion & Film

Lately, several studies have looked at how Muslims are represented in film. This article takes a Scandinavian perspective on the topic and presents an analysis of masculinity and Islam in the Danish action drama Go with Peace Jamil. First an introduction to Islam in film in the western world in general and in Scandinavia in particular is presented, after which Go with Peace Jamil is discussed as a film that affirms some of the problematic images of Muslim men in film, but also challenges these images. As in so many other western films, Muslim men in Go with Peace …

Dams, Roads, And Bridges: (Re)Defining Work And Masculinity In American Indian Literature Of The Great Plains, 1968-Present, Joshua Tyler Anderson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In the study of contemporary American Indian literature, the definition of work and the characterization of Native and non-native laborers—farmers, ranchers, lawmen, smugglers, Indian Affairs agents, academics, activists, "traditionalists," tour guides, artists, among others—are rarely the lenses that scholars use to interpret the texts. Instead, issues of class and labor often take a backseat to those of cultural survivance and traditional and/or "mix-blood" identity, resistance to historical and ongoing acts of colonialism, reassertion of treaty rights and cultural practices, and reclamation of land and cultural artifacts. However, although the canon of contemporary Native literatures warrants close attention to these issues, …

Decoding Literary Aids: A Study On Issues Of The Body, Masculinity, And Self Identity In U.S. Aids Literature From 1984-2011, Alexander Shimon Abrams

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rather than waiting decades to respond, novelists of nearly every literary genre began conceptualizing the AIDS epidemic shortly after the first documented case of the virus in the United States in 1981. Writers, feeling a sense of urgency, wasted little time constructing didactic texts that differ from much historical fiction in that they were written as the tragedy they are commenting on occurred. However, AIDS literature has changed as the disease has spread well beyond the gay communities of San Francisco and New York, causing people to reexamine their longstanding beliefs on masculinity, sexuality, and body politics.

My Master's thesis …

The Military-Masculinity Complex: Hegemonic Masculinity And The United States Armed Forces, 1940-1963, Brandon T. Locke

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The military-industrial complex grew rapidly in the build up to the Second World War and continued to expand in the decades that followed. The military was not only much larger, but had also changed their relationship with American citizens, impacting their lives in new and complex ways. The defensive needs of World War Two and the Cold War made the military an imperative and prestigious institution in the United States, and the Selective Service Draft, beginning in 1940 and running continuously until 1973, gave the military unfettered access to the young men of the nation.

During the same time, government …

The Physical Theatre Of War: Language, Memory, And Gender In Black Watch And War Horse, Andrea M. Gunoe

Theses and Dissertations

The public's perception of war is influenced by every media story they see, every account they read, and every story they hear. News telecasts and newspapers tend to lean towards a focus of the grand narratives of war such as political involvement and overarching strategy. Media such as books and film can tell a more personal narrative of the events of war and attempt to display how war "really is" through the use of written and visual language that focuses more on how things happened as opposed to simply what happened. Theatre provides a unique perspective on war as the …

El Mortífero Machismo: La Representación De La Hipermasculinidad En El Teatro Mexicano Contemporáneo, Laura Crowe

Honors Theses

This paper explores two Mexican plays from the 1980s that denounce rigid societal demarcations that force men to exude hyper‐masculine facades, a cultural phenomenon, which both playwrights expose as problematic and dangerous. In their respective plays, La daga (1982) and Dulces compañías (1987), Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda and Oscar Liera employ villainous male characters of the working class who project hyper‐masculine identities in order to hide their own insecurities. In so doing, the playwrights reveal the hypocrisy and danger of a system in which society cares more about preserving heteronormative values than promoting the safety and acceptance of all of …

Limited War, Limited Enthusiasm: Sexuality, Disillusionment, Survival, And The Changing Landscape Of War Culture In Korean War-Era Comic Books And Soldier Iconography, Joshua K. Akers

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This thesis investigates how Korean War-era comic books and soldier-produced iconography between 1950 and 1953 reflected the conflict and helped construct ideal soldier masculinities. Differentiating between romantic, soldier-produced, and realist imagery, this thesis argues that comic books—traditionally treated as low-brow children’s literature—articulated diverse and sophisticated discussions about the nature of warfare and its impact on manhood. Soldiers and artists reflected a war that came on the heels of World War II, and the disillusionment expressed in these sources reflected a broader cultural conflict between representing World War II sentimentalism and the new, limited war in Korea. This struggle resulted in …

Narrative Framing Of U.S. Military Females In Combat: Inclusion Versus Resistance, James Scott Herford

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study utilizes discursive data to examine how the strategic use of narratives inform policies that shape women's participation in military service overall and more specific, the current controversy over exclusion of women from participation in combat roles within the U.S. military. Specifically, I examine popular military newspapers, blogs and the Department of Defense 2012 Report regarding policies and regulations of female service members. In this study, I provide a sociological analysis of current military-cultural narratives and the institutional narrative discussing women's participation in combat roles in order to provide evidence of the current threat to the military form of …

Anabaptist Masculinity In Reformation Europe, Adam Michael Bonikowske

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the connections between the Anabaptist movement during the Protestant Reformation and the alternative masculinities that developed during sixteenth-century Europe. It argues that Anabaptist men challenged traditional gender norms of European society, and through their unique understanding of the Reformation's message of salvation, these men constructed new ideas about masculinity that were at odds with Protestant and Catholic culture. Anabaptist men placed piety and ethics at the center of reform, and argued for the moral improvement of Christians. In separation from Catholics and mainstream Protestants, Anabaptists created a new culture that exhibited behavior often viewed as dangerous. The …

The Unrecognized Problem: An Analysis Of Masculinity Stereotypes In Advertising Across Six Channels, Darcy Semmler

Honors Thesis

Because advertising relies on simplifications to get messages across more quickly, gendered stereotypes are prevalent in advertising media messages, and have been well- researched for their content and effects. Researchers have been more critical of the messages that perpetuate stereotypes involving women, but have focused less on the stereotypes men must face. This thesis uses content analysis to examine commercials on six channels for the frequency of male or female voiceovers and the frequency in which men and women appear in commercial advertisements. The analysis also investigates the masculinity stereotypes present in the commercials in comparison to neutral or gender- …

A New Masculinity For A New Millennium: Gender And Technology In David Fincher’S The Social Network, Danielle Mcdonald

English Seminar Capstone Research Papers

No abstract provided.

The New Man: Evolving Masculinity In F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side Of Paradise, "Winter Dreams," And "The Swimmers", Adrian Nicole Coursey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The evolving culture and ethos of American capitalist modernity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was marked by a nervousness, or neurasthenia. Strongly gendered, it was characterized among men by effeminacy and an anxiety about masculinity. Confronted by the eroding ideals of Victorian American self-reliance and independence, a stout-hearted willingness to labor to establish one's masculinity seemed an increasingly doubtful prospect for men in the new modern age. Under the twin influences of industrial capitalism and a market economy and a fledgling women's movement, affecting, especially, the work place, the American male felt nervous, anxious, and emasculated. In …

Beauty-Ful Inferiority: Female Subservience In Disney’S Beauty And The Beast, Jeremy Chow

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

The ubiquity of Disney movies has certainly transformed the American cultural landscape. The Disney zeitgeist manifests itself as generations of children actively seek Prince Charmings, unrealistic fairy tale relationships and the omnipotent, happily-ever-after. One such Disney favorite, Beauty and the Beast (1991), reveals typical Disney themes such as the power of altruism, the transformation of the anthropomorphic, and the catharsis of true love. Yet, under these benevolent-seeming Disney themes lurk more sinister, subliminal messages. Beauty and the Beast promotes female subservience and subjugation in addition to the glorification of abusive relationships. Belle, the female protagonist, embodies these gendered disparities and …

Your Humble Servant Shows Himself: Don Saltero And Public Coffeehouse Space, Angela Todd

Journal of International Women's Studies

In 1695, James Salter, who fashioned himself as “Don Saltero,” opened a coffeehouse on a respectable corner in Chelsea. The chief attraction of the coffeehouse, from Salter’s point of view, was the array of natural science detritus and colonial souvenirs displayed on the walls and ceiling. For the price of a cup of coffee, patrons could view the immensity of England’s global grasp, and ponder the bizarre workings of far-away lands and the earth’s creatures. What is noteworthy about Salter’s collection, however, is not the oddities on display—and there were many—but that his collection overlapped considerably with that of the …

Dirty Spaces: Communication And Contamination In Men’S Public Toilets, Ruth Barcan

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper examines the spatiality of men’s public toilets in Australia. It considers public toilets as cultural sites whose work involves not only the literal elimination of waste but also a form of cultural purification. Men’s public toilets are read as sites where heteronormative masculinity is defined, tested and policed. The essay draws on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s concept of homosociality and on Mary Douglas’s conception of dirt as a destabilizing category. It treats the “dirtiness” of public toilets as a submerged metaphor within struggles over masculinity. The essay considers a range of data sources, including interviews, pop culture, the Internet …

Framing Masculinity In The Poetry Of Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Margaret Garry Burke

Journal of International Women's Studies

This paper examines how the contemporary Irish poet, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, is destabilizing traditional notions of the masculine and feminine. Female Irish writers have been suppressed and silenced by a strong patriarchal society and it is interesting to study how Ni Dhomhnaill uses vivid masculine imagery to delineate new boundaries within the institutionalized male/female construction. The two works that I explore, “Nude” and “A God Shows Up,” represent her complex journey toward a strong feminine voice.

Deconstructing Masculinity In A ‘Female Bastion’: Ambiguities, Contradictions And Insights, Charles C. Fonchingong

Journal of International Women's Studies

This article is informed by my experiences teaching women’s studies and specifically feminist theory to predominantly female and male students offering Women’s studies. As a mainstream academic discipline at the University of Buea, housing the only such Department in Cameroon’s Higher Education system, this study uncovers the broader polemics regarding gender and women’s studies.

Against the backdrop of a patriarchal society, this study attempts to account for the shifting strands on masculinity and femininity and gender transgressions as played out by students taking women’s studies. It also analyses the notions, misconceptions and stereotypes that characterise the discipline of women’s studies, …

Understanding Antiwar Activism As A Gendering Activity: A Look At The U.S.’S Anti-Vietnam War Movement, Say Burgin

Journal of International Women's Studies

Research into the gendered nature of war experiences has provided rich ways of understanding how gender constructs society and the nation. Scholarship on peace activism and gender has deepened our knowledge of women’s roles within warring societies and the ways women have understood themselves as promoters of peace. While much of this research asks how antiwar activities and war are predicated upon dominant gender ideals and focuses in particular on women’s experiences, this article aims to explore how some wartime events, specifically antiwar activism, constitutes or reconstitutes gender. Focusing on the United States’ anti-Vietnam War history, I examine how activists …

I Play To Beat The Machine: Masculinity And The Video Game Industry In The United States, Anne Mcdivitt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the video game industry within the United States from the first game that was created in 1958 until the shift to Japanese dominance of the industry in 1985, and how white, middle class masculinity was reflected through the sphere of video gaming. The first section examines the projections of white, middle class masculinity in U.S. culture and how that affected the types of video games that the developers created. The second section examines reflections of this masculine culture that surrounded video gaming in the 1970s and 1980s in the developers, gamers, and the media, while demonstrating how …

Vatos Sagrados: Cursillo And A Midwestern Catholic Borderlands, Adrian Bautista

Diálogo

This article uses a gendered religious borderlands perspective to analyze the Cursillo experiences of Latino Catholic deacons in the Diocese of Cleveland (OH) and the Diocese of Toledo (OH), who trace their family histories to Texas, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. By considering experiences of religious ecstasy, male social bonding, and spiritual activism as a result of Cursillo participation, this article attempts to provide insights into the complex relationships among gender, race, and religion. Joining other recent scholars who have conducted intellectual inquiries toward gendered borderlands literature, my drawing, based on semi-structured interviews and archival research, attempts to demonstrate the significance …

Liminal Identity In Willa Cather's "The Professor's House", Alexandra D. Debiase

ETD Archive

Willa Cather develops the Professor and Tom Outland's identities in the novel The Professor's House through the lenses of domesticity, masculinity, and memory. For the Professor and Tom Outland, these identities are liminal and influenced by the landscape and space around them. Although both liminal, these identities are ultimately different, as the Professor's liminality seems to artificially have an affect on Tom as the novel reads on. Through defining the two main characters in the novel as liminal, Cather makes a comment on a modern shift in the concept of identity, suggesting that as time goes on and values change, …

Historical Butches: Lesbian Experience And Masculinity In Bryher's Historical Fiction, Haley M. Fedor

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This project analyzes three of Bryher's historical novels, while also providing background on the shadowy figure of Bryher herself. Looking at Gate to the Sea, Roman Wall, and Ruan, each serves to represent lesbianism in a variety of coded or metaphorical ways. Various geographical locations or landscapes serve to either represent or depict homosexual desire, and also construct queer spaces for characters to traverse. Limited scholarship exists on any of Bryher's works, particularly that which looks at lesbian sexuality. The genre Bryher writes in allows for a cross-writing of lesbian characters, or gendering lesbian characters as male, and displays awareness …

It'll Be Zion To Me": Ideal Mormon Masculinity In Legacy, David H. Newman

Religion - Theses

This thesis considers the presentation of ideal Mormon masculinity in the film Legacy (Kieth Merrill, 1993), produced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The film responds to the image of Mormon men created in previous films by articulating an alternate masculinity which distinguishes Mormon men from both negative stereotypes and other American men. This thesis briefly presents the history of the cinematic image of Mormon men and earlier attempts by the LDS Church to frame a different conception of Mormon men through film. Then, the work explores Mormon masculinity theoretically via R.W. Connell's hegemonic masculinity, Gilles Deleuze …

Instruments Of Righteousness: The Intersections Of Black Power And Anti-Vietnam War Activism In The United States, 1964-1972, Amanda L. Higgins

Theses and Dissertations--History

Instruments of Righteousness investigates the class-, race-, and gender-based identities and intersections of women and men in the Black Power movement and their various organizing activities to gain certain and defined concessions from federal, state, and local governments. It argues that the intersections of Black Power and anti-Vietnam War activism created changing definitions of black masculinity and femininity, expressed through anti-draft and anti-war work. Black Power and anti-war activism cannot and should not be investigated separate from one another. The experiences of Black Power soldiers, antiwar members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panther Party, and the …

“To Think Of The Subject Unmans Me:” An Exploration Of Grief And Soldiering Through The Letters Of Henry Livermore Abbott, Rebekah N. Oakes

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

“‘To think of the subject unmans me:’ An Exploration of Grief and Soldiering Through the Letters of Henry Livermore Abbott,” explores the challenges to both the Victorian ideals of manliness and the culture of death presented by the American Civil War. The letters of Henry Abbott, a young officer serving with the 20^th Massachusetts, display the tension between his upper class New England world in which gentleman were to operate within an ideal of emotional control and sentimentality, and his new existence on the ground level of the Army of the Potomac. After the death of his brother, this …

Acting, Integrity, And Gender In Coriolanus, Kent Lehnhof

English Faculty Articles and Research

Shakespeare's Coriolanus... anticipates and corroborates modern-day analyses emphasizing the sociopolitical dimensions and determinants of antitheatrical discourse. In the present essay, I would like to shift my focus from questions of class/status to questions of sex/gender, endeavoring to trace the links between Coriolanus’s antiperformative zeal and his ultra-masculine identity. For though it is true that Coriolanus opposes the dissimulation of others on political grounds (i.e., it creates social confusion), what causes him to reject play-acting in his own person is the sexualized fear that it will unman him (i.e., turn him into a squeaking virgin or crying boy). In this manner, …