Browsing by Subject "Masculinities"
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Item Re-humanizando al sujeto alienado : extrañamientos de lo masculino en la narrativa existencial cubana(2015-05) Watlington, Francis David; Salgado, César Augusto; Arroyo, Jossianna; Afolabi, Omoniyi; Borge, Jason; Roncador, Sonia; Perez-Ortiz, MelanieMy dissertation Re-Humanizing the Alien: Estranged Masculinities in Cuban Existentialist Fiction examines the role of alienation in the construction of compensatory masculine subjectivities during the social, cultural and industrial modernization of Cuba, dating from the mid-19th century until the initial stages of the Cuban Revolution, in the 1960s. In this project I analyze, primarily from the perspective of gender studies, transcontinental philosophy (European and Latin American) and the history of ideas in the Hispanic-American world, the shifts in masculine identity formation among Cuban intellectuals and writers whose work deals with the relation between angst and freedom in the context of crisis tendencies in the developing colonial/postcolonial state. For this purpose, I will analyze the works of the following Cuban authors: José Antonio Saco (1797-1879), Juan Francisco Manzano (1797-1854), Enrique Labrador Ruiz (1902-1991), Virgilio Piñera (1912-1979), Edmundo Desnoes (1930-) and Calvert Casey (1924-1969). Studying these writers and their literary production, I will be able to contribute to current debates on existentialism with regard to the role of masculinities in generating forms of resistance against patriarchal and colonial oppression. Moreover, I demonstrate how these gender constructs interrogate traditional notions of Cuban and Spanish Caribbean modernity by deploying existential narratives in the service of fashioning a literary-grounded decolonial ethics. Consequently, I provide a critical reading of the topic of existentialism which demonstrates the validity of the notion of gender as a useful category of analysis for understanding the role of affect in destabilizing cultural gender norms. This project ultimately aims to analyze alternative ways of expressing masculinity which have emerged from within literary negotiations of identity, thus allowing for a more inclusive and comprehensive evaluation of Cuban male subjectivities, and a deeper understanding of the historical development of social and economic relations in the nation-state, as well as its engagement with ideology, race, national character and politics.Item Serious play : exploring literacies and masculinities within drama companies for young adults(2010-05) Bogard, Treavor Lowell; Bomer, Randy; Cary, Lisa; Mosley, Melissa; Schallert, Diane; Skerrett, AllisonThis multi-site case study examines literacy practices across four theatre companies for young adults. The study draws upon ethnographic methods including interviews, field notes, and video data to show how composing practices situated with acts of design fostered multiple entry points through text, a multimodal stance when reading, collaboration, play, shared response, and sustained engagement in the orchestration of available modalities in the creation of characters. Drawing upon theories of multimodality, play, and masculinities, the study links literacy practices in drama with the configuration of historically subordinated, non-normative masculinities, including self-identified gay youth. These young men reported excessive self-monitoring and identity management strategies within heteronormative school contexts, but took-up a plurality of masculinities as they engaged design practices that encouraged play, risk-taking, and the appropriation of available media in their design of characters. The study cultivates an awareness of how literacy practices in drama intersected with affirming construction of non-normative gendered and sexual identities typically subordinated in school settings, but that were reportedly more aligned with informants’ sense of self. The study draws implications for how educators may help young people critique structures of heternormativity and hegemonic masculinities that often limit the identities and masculinities available in school. In addition, the study draws implications for classroom practice in the language arts that position youth as designers of multimodal texts that allow for multiple representations of the self.Item Seth Rogen and the beta male : an exploration of masculinity in Freaks and Geeks, Knocked Up, and This Is the End(2014-05) Reinwald, Jennifer Jean; Beltrán, Mary C.It has been suggested that gender is a societal construct and as such its features can shift depending on the beliefs of society (Connell 77). If this is the case, then hegemonic masculinity, as defined by Raewyn Connell, should also shift its features based on societal changes. In this project I examine Seth Rogen’s representation of beta male masculinity in his performances in the television show Freaks and Geeks (1999), and the movies Knocked Up (2007) and This Is the End (2013). These texts were chosen because Rogen, an actor who I argue embodies the contemporary beta male in U.S. film and television, is a significant character in each. I use textual analysis of the films and television show to track how masculinity is portrayed and how one text paved the way for the others through the actor’s rising star status. I also briefly examine Jason Segel in Freaks and Geeks and Jay Baruchel in This Is the End. I explore how critics and fans receive Rogen, as well as the societal context surrounding Freaks and Geeks, Knocked Up, and This Is the End. I use discourse analysis to understand how these texts fit in to the cultural climate in which they were released. This project aims to identify the type of masculinities these texts endorse and whether they accept or challenge the most idealized societal norms of masculinity at the time of production. How do the masculinities depicted in these texts differ from dominant hegemonic masculinity as reinforced in prior decades of film? How can masculinities that historically fall outside of the dominant hegemonic standard now be framed as another type of hegemonic masculinity? Not only will this project look at how these masculinities function within the texts themselves, but I will also place them in context with the social and cultural landscape of the time in which the texts were released.Item Taking the lid off the Black Rio movement and música soul : the shifting terms of race and citizenship in Rio de Janeiro(2014-12) Olsen, Sandra Lea; Moore, Robin D., 1964-In this project, I situate the Black Rio movement and Brazilian música soul within a history of representations of black Brazilian masculinities in music. I do so in order to trace changing conceptualizations of race and citizenship in 1970s Rio de Janeiro. I seek to move beyond the existing literature which judges the Black Rio movement on its political expediency while ignoring its historico-cultural context. That is, prior works tend to pit black soul musicians and dancers against the mostly-white, middle-class intellectuals who have historically made determinations about black Brazilians, and in doing so these works have judged the Black Rio movement a political failure. Instead, I focus on the agency asserted by black Brazilian musicians and dancers in representing themselves and in creating alternative places for the enactment of their identities in opposition to the normative expectations of Blackness and standards of masculinity. Beginning in the 1920s and the 1930s, expectations for black masculine behavior were tied to restrictive, demeaning representations of the malandro in samba music and of afrobrasilidade in Carnaval celebrations. These representations were influenced by changing attitudes towards race in the context of national consolidation and the propagation of the myth of racial democracy, which recognized racial difference while not recognizing extant racial inequality. Entrenched modes of thinking and normative modes of being were adamantly challenged by soul musicians and dancers in the 1970s. Through the adoption of U.S. funk and soul music and strong masculine imagery associated with the Black Power movement, black Brazilians appropriated and resignified international symbols in order to forge a new black identity. In doing so, soul musicians and dancers carved alternative spaces for themselves, and renegotiated the terms of their inclusion in the Brazilian nation. This paper considers the shifting place of Blackness in Brazil through an analysis of visual, aural and lyrical representations of Blackness in music and in the critical reception of that music. I argue that funk and soul music played a key role in destabilizing the restrictive notion of afrobrasilidade held by mainstream Brazilian society, enabling new ways of being both black and Brazilian.Item The forest frontier in San Juan Lachao (Oaxaca, Mexico) : contested environmental conservation in Chatino Indigenous and campesino territories(2022-02-03) Barrera de la Torre, Gerónimo; Sletto, Bjørn; Cruz, Hilaria; Canova, Paola; Young, Kenneth; Cons, JasonThis dissertation examines how community-based forestry in Indigenous and campesino territories in San Juan Lachao (SJL, Oaxaca, Mexico) shapes community-forest relations. Over the last decade, SJL communities have implemented environmental programs that include payments for ecosystem services, conservation of mountain cloud forest, sustainable forest management for timber extraction, and carbon offsetting. The research draws on 5 years of participant observation, interviews with community members, participatory mapping workshops and the production of a feature film in collaboration with community members. The study draws on theories of assemblage and social difference to map the complex and unequal processes of fronterization, commodification, and land enclosure, as well as inhabitants’ negotiation, resistance, and accommodation to these programs, thus revealing the dynamics through which forestry takes place. The research traces the long-term process of fronterization whereby SJL has been integrated into national and international market as new resources are produced (coffee, timber, carbon), thus demonstrating the work of forestry in (re)producing this territory as a resource frontier. Through this analysis, I explore the intersections of land, carbon, commons, knowledge production, and gender arrangements to demonstrate the emergence and reproduction of capitalist relations and spaces of agency as community members take advantage of or challenge these programs. The dissertation shows that community-based forestry territorializes (1) by advancing commodification of the forest through carbon offsetting; (2) though a complex process of enclosure of communal land linked to long-term processes of settlement, pastureland expansion, and ‘restriction’ on access to land due to forestry programs; and (3) via differential access to and ability to know the forest based on gender arrangements, location, ethnicity, and language.Item Transcending the binary? : gay men’s perspectives on transgender men(2017-04-27) Combs, Thatcher Phoenix; Williams, Christine L., 1959-; Gonzalez-Lopez, GloriaWith the burgeoning visibility of transgender rights in the United States, questions remain regarding how the mainstream LGBT movement will continue to integrate transgender people. In this thesis, I focus on the perspectives of cisgender gay men about transgender men within their communities to understand how divisions between these groups may stymie the LGBT movement going forward. Therefore, the guiding questions for this thesis are: 1) Do gay cisgender men view transgender men as friends and as potential sexual partners? 2) How do gay men manage their identity as gay men when they have been with transgender men in romantic relationships or in sexual encounters? To answer these general questions, I conducted a qualitative study using in-depth interviews with 15 men, in San Francisco, California, who self-identified as gay or queer. Focusing on masculinities theory, I uncovered three main barriers in these men’s lives that shape the possibility of integrating transgender men within their communities. First, I show that these men grappled with defining manhood, maleness, and gayness between biological or constructivist discourse which created tensions for being able to integrate transgender men within gay communities. Secondly, these men reshaped a sexual history that included people assigned female at birth as a mechanism for the creation of a gay identity. Lastly, the requirements of doing gender (West and Zimmerman 1987) facilitate the invisibility of transgender men in social spaces; for cisgender gay men, especially when faced with sexual desire for transgender men experienced a vagina panic. These men’s narratives, reflected in this thesis, highlight the restrictiveness of essentialist discourse, the LGBT movement’s discourse which upholds essentialism, and hegemonic masculinity. All three work in tandem to discount transgender men as a part of the gay male community and, in doing so, creates barriers for possible social and political connections.