Browsing by Subject "Masculinity"

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“Altamente teatral” : subject, nation, and media in the works of Virgilio Piñera
(2010-05) Cabrera Fonte, Pilar; Salgado, César Augusto; Lindstrom, Naomi; Richmond-Garza, Elizabeth M.; Rossman, Charles; Wilkinson, Lynn; Dominguez-Ruvalcaba, Hector
This study analyzes Virgilio Piñera’s concept of performance in relation to his representation of mass media products and technologies. The central argument is that Piñera’s notion of theatrical representation connects fiction with politics in subversive ways, challenging assumptions of naturalness at different levels, from that of the gendered self, to the family and the nation. To support this argument, the study focuses on Piñera’s representation of a variety of mass media genres as these inspire everyday life performances, mainly in Cuba but also in Argentina. While fictional models and sentimental narratives from the mass media most often convey oppressive conceptions of gender, family, and nation, the author’s representation of the media’s pervasive influence questions and denaturalizes those conceptions. Piñera stresses the disruptive potential of individual performance against the repetitive character of both the mass media industry and the social reenactments of its sentimental myths. His references to mass culture thus destabilize structures of power, including stereotypes of both sexuality and gender. The analysis shows that Piñera’s fictions exhibit important characteristics of queer aesthetics. The study comprises a time span of almost three decades, from the early 1940s to the late 1960s, and focuses on a selection of Piñera’s criticism, drama, poetry, and narrative. Within those texts, special attention is given to references to photography, radio programs, romance novels, movies, and popular music. The organization of Piñera’s texts in this study answers to both thematic and chronological considerations. Chapter 1 outlines the study’s objectives and methodology, also providing a background on critical studies about Piñera. Chapters 2 and 3 deal with plays and short-stories written before the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Chapter 2 examines texts that represent both family and nation in relation to a variety of mass media genres, from Cuban “radionovelas” to Hollywood gangster films. Chapter 3 focuses on two narratives, written in Buenos Aires, that address posing and self-representation in relation to issues of sexuality, masculinity, and power. Chapter 4 deals with a selection of poems written, for the most part, after 1959. In these poems, the literary use of photography stresses theatrical self-representation, often in direct resistance to revolutionary reformulations of masculinity in the figure of the “New Man.”
Are there any machos in the house? : contemporary manifestations of machismo
(2017-05) Aragón García, Seiri Janett; Gonzalez, Rachel Valentina; Lopez, Belem G
This research explores the transnational existence of machismo and its continuous presence among Mexican and Mexican American men as transnational ideologies and attitudes from Mexico into the United States. This mixed methods approach, comprised of in-depth interviews, virtual ethnographic analysis, and textual analysis. These approaches to machismo is dedicated to better understand the social performances of Mexican origin, cis-gendered men living in the United States and Mexico, who find their masculinities bridged through social media, as nationalistic pride, taking pride in their Mexican origin/ heritage risen out of narco culture specifically. These three different interviews are presented in holistic sections titled, Señoras de Las Lomas and Machismo, Traditional ideologies of Mexican undocumented millennial, and The Complexity of Social Media and the Narco Lifestyle. The compilation of these case studies presented, aims to demonstrate how machista ideologies and attitudes continue to persist in contemporary U.S. and Mexican society. This research aims to provide insight on how traits are learned and adopted, (public and private) and how they become manifested in online spaces (not exclusively). Readers will be able to reflect about the oversaturation of machista ideologies, and gendered perspectives on machista ideologies and how these “traditions” have been embedded in Mexican culture, become transnational, circulated, re-circulated, inculcated, and how they persist, even subtly in quotidian life in the 21st century.
Between practice and the classroom : the making of masculinity and race in the mis-education of Black male student-athletes on a college campus
(2012-05) Yearwood, Gabby M. H.; Gordon, Edmund Tayloe; Franklin, Maria; Richardson, Matt; Smith, Christen; Vargas, João
This project argues that American college sports involving Black male athletes (primarily football and men’s basketball) at Gulf Coast State University (GCSU) actively construct and impact local knowledge about Black masculinity in relation to white, male, hetero-normative systems of authority. These sports, in turn, then impact policy, administrative decisions, and teaching approaches as they relate to young Black men on a college campus. In other words, Black male college athletes on a white college campus offer the opportunity for a reinforcement of systems of authority through the pattern of de-stabilizing their subjectivity (as nothing more than physical entities) in order to provide a revenue-generating resource for the university. I posit that the positioning of Black males in this space as athletes and as students is strategic and intentional, when one takes into account the ongoing dynamic of the hegemonic positioning of white, male, hetero-normative value systems as the unmarked standard of social norms. That these contested meanings become significant within the realm of sport situates sport itself as another, often underutilized, space for social inquiry. I further argue that this categorization is heightened in the context of a predominantly white institution. Through ethnographic fieldwork, I explored the sport (mainly football and men’s basketball) and academic community at GCSU with the goal of understanding how high-profile and high-revenue sports and their participants become central to the understanding and expression of normalized ideas about race, gender, and sexuality. I reason that the predominantly white demography of GCSU, added to the uneven ratio of Black to white males on the football and basketball teams, creates perceptions about race and masculinity that factor into people’s everyday understanding of the term “student-athlete”. The term “student-athlete” becomes racialized and gendered in ways that continually make reference to Black male athletes differently than other students and student-athletes at the university. I believe these effects on the term then impacts the structural mechanisms that affect the daily lives of these Black male athletes both on and off the field, both inside and outside the classroom.
Br(others) only : Rashid Johnson, class, and the fraternal orders of Afrofuturism
(2012-08) Richardson, Jared C. 1988-; Smith, Cherise, 1969-
Br(others) Only conceptualizes the wall sculptures of Rashid Johnson as free-standing “altars” that play with different and sometimes divergent brands of black masculinity and classed homosociality. Primarily, I analyze three of Johnson’s sculptures from the late 2000s: I Who Have Nothing (2008); I’m Still in Love with You (2008); and Souls of Black Folk (2010). I argue that, by invoking the history of black renaissance men, gentlemen scholars, and entertainers, Johnson’s work plays with various kinds of black masculinity and homosociality that simultaneously straddle the past and future. By doing so, his art not only enacts a racialized temporality, but it also chips away at monolithic notions of black masculinity by fabricating contradictory amalgams of race, class, and gender. For my analysis of Johnson’s artworks, I utilize Cassandra Jackson’s Violence, Visual Culture, and the Black Male Body (2010) as the chief framework for conceptualizing the waxy coats of Johnson’s sculptures as wounded bodies in an effort to “flesh out” the vulnerability of black men. Theorizing the putrescent surfaces of Johnson’s sculptures as violable bodies allows me to consider the ruptures between seemingly impenetrable black masculinity and the always-present vulnerability of the black male body to violence.
Broken (his)tories inside restored walls : Kurds, Armenians and the cultural politics of reconstruction in urban Diyarbakir, Turkey
(2014-06-25) Sengul, Serap Ruken; Ali, Kamran Asdar, 1961-; Visweswaran, Kamala; Stewart, Kathleen C; Speed, Shannon; Cvetkovich, Ann
An old and long-contested city located in Northern Mesopotamia, Diyarbakır was multiply decimated and refashioned throughout the twentieth century. After serving as a coordinating center of the Armenian Genocide, the city became a strategic target of Turkish Republican policies of Turkifying history, space and the Kurds, and then the epicenter of Kurdish struggle as of 1970s. Since the 2000s, a comprehensive politics of reconstruction organized around an oppositional idiom of multiculturalism has brought Diyarbakır’s ancient urban historical heritage to the fore of the conflict between the Kurds and the Turkish state. In this process, a wide range of critical actors, including Kurdish dissidents, articulated for Diyarbakır a powerful “city of culture” image for reclaiming the city’s violently foreclosed non-Turkish (Kurdish) and non-Muslim (Armenian) heritages. However, the revelatory promise of this new representational regime was limited by rendering the meaning and significance of all phenomena that circulated in the city as witness to Diyarbakir’s cosmopolitan cultural heritage. As a result, the disquieting histories of political violence of the recent past often remained suppressed. Furthermore, because the city as exterior space is typically coded as male, this narrative put forward an archive of Diyarbakir’s past and present as essentially male, imagined and narrated through a middle-class male gaze, experience and voice. Based on eighteen-months of fieldwork begun in August 2006 followed by archival and secondary research at multiple sites, this dissertation critically analyzes the cultural politics of reconstruction in Diyarbakır by unpacking its culturalist and classed overdeterminations. Specifically, I take this politics as an entry point into differently embodied histories and experiences of Kurdishness, Armeniannes, and manhood involved in the processes of Turkish state-making and Kurdish nation-building in the city for the past century. I do this by tracing alternative genealogies of four gendered figures, namely Kirve, “the uncircumcised terrorist,” șehir çocuğu, and qirix, which have effectively marked male experiences of violence, oppression and struggle from time of the Armenian genocide to the present. This work contributes to ethnography of the Kurds, Armenians and the Turkish state, as well as to literatures on state sovereignty, nationalism, gender and masculinity, and urban geographies of (post)conflict.
The brothelization of gender and sexuality in late twentieth-century Latin American narrative and film
(2009-12) White, Burke Oliver; Domínguez Ruvalcaba, Héctor, 1962-; Salgado, César Augusto; Roncador, Sonia; Pereiro-Otero, Jose-Manuel; Gonzalez-Lopez, Gloria
The brothel has an important role in Latin American literature and film. The fictional brothel is expected to produce gender in both men and women, but these gendered identities are placed at the extremes within the bordello. This gender extremism creates opposition, or gender transgression, in the characters of twentieth-century Latin American narrative and film. Here I map the brothelized iteration of both genders through prohibitions, taboo, abjection, and violence within various texts and films. Much of the discipline of this cultural production of gender rests on the body. The body must bear the mark of its gender or the character risks violent consequences. Fatness plays an important role in this sexual economy, because fatness destroys gender, pushing the subject toward an androgyny that other characters reject or hate. Though the brothel has been studied before, it has not been analyzed from this gendered perspective.
Constructions of masculinity in Adult Swim's The venture bros.
(2012-08) Garcia, Feliks José; Kearney, Mary Celeste, 1962-; Fuller, Jennifer
The increasingly popular Adult Swim series, The Venture Bros. (2003-present), created by Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick, is an animated series that interrogates established paradigms of masculinity. Combining narrative elements that are easily attributed to American action films with those of adventure cartoons, the creators of The Venture Bros. create a world where comic book and fantasy adventures coexist. The scope of this thesis narrows and focuses on the ways in which representations of masculinity are constructed and function within the series. What are the various types of masculinity represented in the series? Are the representations of masculinity reproductions of hegemonic masculinity? How is an awareness of dominant representations of masculinity and maleness expressed in The Venture Bros.? This thesis explores how previous scholarship on discourses of dominant representations of male masculinity sheds light on ways to analyze the various masculinities in The Venture Bros.
Consuming and performing Black manhood : the Post Hip-Hop Generation and the consumption of popular media and cultural products
(2011-12) Williams, Adam Clark; Watkins, S. Craig (Samuel Craig); Moore, Leonard N.
Thirty-three young Black men of the Post-Hip Hop Generation (ages 18-25) in Austin, TX, participated in a qualitative study centering on questions investigating Black manhood, media use, and the consumption of popular cultural products. Further, the researcher examined representations of Black men throughout music videos, films, and MySpace profiles. The purpose of this study was to enhance our knowledge about how Black manhood is being defined, conceptualized, and expressed by young Black men, and how significant media and cultural consumption plays a role in their lives. This study probes six questions: RQ1: How do young Black males interpret the images and messages about Black men from mainstream media? RQ2: What types of cultural products are being consumed by young Black men? Why do they consume them? RQ3: How do young Black males define Black manhood? RQ4: Do these cultural products influence the ways that young Black men define/express Black manhood? If so, how? Focus group sessions were conducted throughout the study, which were video recorded and transcribed. Transcriptions were then imported into a qualitative software program known as Atlas.ti, where statements related to the purpose of the study were coded and analyzed. These coded statements were then compared to observations made by the researcher from the examined media representations.
Cosmic cowboys, armadillos and outlaws: the cultural politics of Texan identity in the 1970s
(2009-05) Mellard, Jason Dean; Davis, Janet M.
This dissertation investigates the figure of “the Texan” during the 1970s across local, regional, and national contexts to unpack how the “national” discourse of Texanness by turns furthered and foreclosed visions of a more inclusive American polity in the late twentieth century. The project began in oral history work surrounding the cultural politics of Austin’s progressive country music scene in the decade, but quickly expanded to encompass the larger transformations roiling the state and the nation in the 1970s. As civil rights and feminist movements redefined hegemonic notions of the representative Texan, icons of Anglo-Texan masculinity—the cowboy, the oilman, the wheeler-dealer—came in for a dizzying round of celebration and critique, satire and ritual performance. Such Seventies performances of “the Texan” as took place in Austin’s “cosmic cowboy” subculture provided an imaginative space to refigure Anglo-Texan identity in ways that responded to and internalized the decade’s identity politics. From the death of Lyndon Johnson to Willie Nelson’s picnics, from the United Farm Workers’ marches on Austin to the spectacle of Texas Chic on the streets of New York City, Texas mattered in these years not simply as a place, but as a repository of longstanding American myths and symbols at a historical moment in which that mythology was being deeply contested. This dissertation maps the messy ground of the 1970s in Texas along several paths. It begins some years prior with the Centennial Exposition of 1936 and the regionalism of J. Frank Dobie, Walter Prescott Webb, and Roy Bedichek before proceeding to the challenges to their vision of “the Texan” on the part of the African American civil rights, Chicano, and women’s movements. The dissertation’s central chapters then address the melding of countercultural forms and the state’s traditional Anglo-Texan iconography and music in spaces like Austin’s Armadillo World Headquarters. Popular music, art, film, journalism, and literature evoke this attempted revisioning of Anglo-Texan masculinity in dialogue with the decade’s identity politics.
Examining the experiences and perceptions of Latino males pursuing a PhD in the social sciences/humanities at a predominately White, research-intensive, public university
(2014-05) Gonzalez, Manuel Antonio, IV; Saenz, Victor B.
The struggles of Latino males along the education pipeline have been well documented in recent history. Despite this increased research focus, gaps continue to exist in the literature on Latino males in education settings. Currently, the literature predominately centers on the Latino male experience in the K-12, community college, and 4-year college environments. The educational experiences of Latino males in doctoral education settings have not yet been presented. This study examines and provides insight into the Latino male doctoral student journey by detailing Latino male doctoral student experiences and perceptions at a predominately White, research-intensive, public university. In light of the deficit model research surrounding men of color, it is imperative to present the narratives of successful, high achieving Latino males along their pursuit of a doctoral degree. This study critically examines the experiences and perceptions of Latino males in pursuit of a PhD within the humanities or social sciences at a predominately White, research-intensive, public university. The mission of the study was to shed light on thematic influences, factors, and emotions that led these individuals to take interest and pursue a doctoral degree. The study's findings are presented under the lens of Latino critical race theory and gender role conflict in order to develop a thorough understanding of the internal and external influences on the Latino male doctoral student experience. My dissertation's unique contributions are its addition of the Latino male doctoral student experience to the literature on Latino males in educational contexts. Furthermore, this study's unique contributions include a new perspective on how Latino males perceive their gender roles and responsibilities as successful doctoral students. The Latino male doctoral students in this study displayed resilience during moments of vulnerability and embrace responsibility during challenging circumstances. These actions were efforts to maintain control of their doctoral education experience and to create a new image for Latino masculinity. As the findings indicate, the Latino male doctoral student experience at a large predominately White, research-intensive, public university is filled with complexity, adversity, and determination.
The Gift of Rain : re-imagining masculinity, ethnicity, and identity in Malaysia
(2013-05) Menon, Sheela Jane; Lee, Julia H.; Harlow, Barbara
Tan Twan Eng's debut novel, "The Gift of Rain" (2007), explores issues of allegiance and belonging through a conflicted figure of mixed heritage -- Philip Hutton. Set during the Japanese Occupation of Malaya during World War II, the novel looks back to this period as an unstable cornerstone from which to imagine and re-imagine ethnic, national, and gender identity in Malaysia. Yet, the vision that Tan offers is itself riddled with inconsistencies. The multi-ethnic identity that the novel celebrates is contingent upon systems of power, particularly those associated with patriarchy, British imperialism, and Chinese heritage. I argue that The Gift of Rain opens up a space within which to question narratives of nationhood and loyalty, ethnicity and culture, masculinity and femininity, suggesting that identity remains conflicted and conditional, emerging and developing amidst constant change.
Good guys and bad guys : race, class, gender and concealed handgun licensing
(2012-05) Stroud, Angela Rhea, 1981-; Williams, Christine; Auyero, Javier; Carrington, Ben; Hartigan, John; Warr, Mark
Abstract: This dissertation explores how cultural meanings around race, class, and gender shape concealed handgun licensing in Texas. This project utilizes in-depth interviews with 36 concealed handgun license holders and field observations at licensing courses and gun ranges to understand why people get a license, what their gun carrying practices are, and how they imagine criminal threat and self-defense. Through my analysis of interviews, I find that masculinity is central to how men become gun users and why they want to obtain a concealed handgun license. Women explain their desire for a CHL as rooted in feelings of empowerment. While traditional conceptions of “fear of crime” are not a motivating factor for most of the license holders I interviewed, I find that CHL holders feel vulnerable to potential crime because they assume that criminals are armed. These interviews also suggest that perceptions of criminality are highly racialized, as predominantly black spaces are marked as threatening. As I argue, part of the appeal of concealed handgun licenses is that they signify to those who have them that they are the embodiment of personal responsibility.
Hedged out : the reproduction of elite structures in finance
(2017-05-05) Neely, Megan Tobias; Williams, Christine L., 1959-; Galbraith, James; Glass, Jennifer; Lin, Ken-Hou; Rudrappa, Sharmila
This dissertation is a study of how and why the “1 percent” remains a bastion of male domination. My focus is the hedge fund industry, a case study of the top earners. Women and minority men are drastically underrepresented in this industry, which is consistent with other high-paying professions. For this research, I conducted in-depth interviews with 45 hedge fund workers and field observations at over 30 workplaces and industry events over a 4-year period in Texas and New York. I find that gender and race, as systems of inequality, allow for the concentration of economic resources among financial elites in this industry. An ideology of masculinity legitimizes and organizes relationships among elite white men that largely restrict women and minority men from accessing the benefits of working in a highly lucrative industry. This helps to explain how the “old boys’ club” that dominates the upper echelons of finance becomes established and persists over time. My research demonstrates how the rising income and wealth gap is directly tied to gender and race inequality
Hunters, soldiers, and holy men : an archaeological study of masculinities and male household space at Mission San Antonio de Padua, Monterey County, California
(2017-05) Dylla, Emily Donna; Rodríguez-Alegría, Enrique; Franklin, Maria; Wilson, Sam; Peelo, Sarah; Blackmore, Chelsea
In this dissertation, I examine masculinity and domestic spaces inhabited by men at San Antonio de Padua, an 18th and 19th century Spanish mission site in central California. My research includes two all-male residences: the mission soldiers’ barracks and the dormitory for unmarried male neophytes (jayunte). The third housing context is mixed-gender, an adobe housing wing occupied by nuclear neophyte families. I examined architecture and built space as well as lithic, ceramic, metal, and glass material assemblages, assessing their differences and similarities with one another. My research was guided by two sets of primary research questions, focusing specifically on two subjects: ‘masculinity’ and ‘household’. Regarding masculinity, I asked: What characteristics defined masculinity within the mission system, and was it a homogenous or heterogeneous phenomenon? Is masculinity archaeologically discernable? Regarding households, I asked: What defines a mission household, and did the included housing contexts meet those criteria? Adopting a comparative approach, I synthesized multiple data sets to contrast the housing contexts in both a quantitative and qualitative fashion. This includes extrapolating spatial data from 11 seasons of field notes and collecting attribute data from more than 13,000 recovered artifacts. I incorporated these data with primary and secondary historical sources, as well as oral tradition relayed by a Salinan elder. Based on these data, I present two arguments. First, I argue that masculinity was indeed a heterogeneous, complex phenomenon that underpinned San Antonio’s physical and social landscape. Not only were there contrasts between colonizers and neophytes, there were contrasts within these groups as well. These masculinities were archaeologically discernable in both built space and material culture. Not only does this enrich mission history, it demonstrates the value of gendering male actors from an archaeological perspective. Second, I argue ‘household’ was a tool harnessed by Spanish missionaries to help rework the conceptual universe of local Indigenous peoples. In addition to redefining what individual households could and could not be, missionaries structured the missions themselves after a loose household metaphor. This connection between institution and household has important implications for Spanish colonial and household archaeologies.
In search of understanding : examining the life role management approach of fathers who are coaches
(2015-05) Graham, Jeffrey Alexander; Dixon, Marlene A., 1970-; Bartholomew, John; Rochlen, Aaron; Hunt, Thomas; Bowers, Matthew
The role of the father is changing in United States society (Bianchi, Robinson, & Milkie, 2006). Trend analysis indicates that men are beginning to be more involved in the family role, especially in regards to housework, cooking, cleaning, and childcare duties (Galinsky, Aumann, & Bond, 2011; Harrington, Van Deusen, & Humberd, 2011). Further research suggests that the basic definition of what makes a good father are also expanding (Bianchi et al., 2006). A good father is now defined as a co- financial provider, a disciplinarian, as well as a co-caretaker of the home and children (Rohner & Veneziano, 2001). In conjunction with these cultural changes, the research outside the realm of sport indicates that men are experiencing higher levels of work- family conflict than they did even ten years ago (Galinsky et al., 2011; Harrington et al., 2011; Parker & Wang, 2013). However, in the sport industry, orthodox masculine pressures celebrating competition, aggression, sacrifice, and commitment largely remain prominent (Dixon & Bruening, 2005; Wilson, 2002). Therefore, individuals working in sport are faced with shifting societal pressures and inflexible industry cultural norms (Graham & Dixon, 2014). Research on mothers in the sport industry suggests that work-family conflict is a significant source of tension for women working in sport (Bruening & Dixon, 2007; Dixon & Bruening, 2007). Furthermore, there is some evidence that men are experiencing levels of work-family conflict that is parallel with their female counterparts (Schenewark & Dixon, 2012). However, less is understood about the experiences of fathers who are coaches from an in-depth standpoint. Fundamental questions about how men experience, interpret, and cope with the competing pressures to be a good father and a good employee have largely gone unexplored (Graham & Dixon, 2014). As a result, the purpose of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of the experiences of fathers in sport. To that end, 24 fathers who were also high school head coaches from Texas volunteered for a study investigating their work-life balance experiences. The findings indicate that indeed fathers in sport are faced with tension and strain stemming from both the coaching role and the family role. The findings also suggest that men cope with these tensions by carefully managing the resources of time, energy, and attention. In addition, the fathers reported depending heavily on their wives for support in the coaching role. Furthermore, the data indicate that organizational support mechanisms were simply an unused and distrusted source of support that only became an option in extreme cases or health crises. These findings have important implications for theory as well as management. More specifically, the findings of this study had direct implications in regards to theories on role conflict, role engulfment, coping strategies, and masculinity. From a practical stance, this study also has important implications for sport managers in the areas of motivation, citizenship behavior, voicing behavior, and insights on how to support men in athletics.
Individual differences and the effects of viewing ideal media portrayals on body satisfaction and drive for muscularity : testing new moderators for men
(2013-05) Hobza, Cody Layne; Rochlen, Aaron B.
Historically, cultural pressures to be thin and their effects on women (e.g., body dissatisfaction, disordered eating) have received considerable attention from researchers and clinicians. However, acknowledgement of cultural pressures on men to be muscular and lean is much more recent, as are men's increasing rates of body dissatisfaction and body-changing behaviors (i.e., drive for muscularity, nutritional supplement/steroid use, excessive weightlifting). The increasing presence of idealized lean, muscular men in the media may be one of the influences on men's increasing body dissatisfaction, although studies examining the relationship between viewing these idealized portrayals and men's drive for muscularity/body satisfaction have yielded mixed results. Additionally, individual difference factors that may influence this relationship need further investigation. The purpose of this study was to address these two areas of research. It was hypothesized that men exposed to idealized television portrayals of lean, muscular men would report higher muscle/body fat dissatisfaction and drive for muscularity attitudes scores compared to men exposed to television portrayals of average-looking men. Additionally, it was predicted that men who report higher perfectionism, neuroticism, and drive for muscularity, and who more strongly endorse traditional attitudes about the male role, would report higher drive for muscularity and muscle/body fat dissatisfaction at post-test compared to men who report lower perfectionism, neuroticism, and drive for muscularity, and who are less concerned with traditional male role norms. Two-hundred-thirty-five undergraduate men at The University of Texas at Austin participated in the online study. During Phase 1, participants completed questionnaires assessing drive for muscularity, muscle/body fat dissatisfaction, perfectionism, neuroticism, and attitudes about the male role. One week later, they were randomly assigned to either the muscular-image or average-image group to complete Phase 2. After viewing television commercials corresponding with their experimental groups, participants again completed all pre-test measures. Results suggested that men in the average-image group (rather than the muscular-image group) with high drive for muscularity experienced greater body fat dissatisfaction than men with low drive for muscularity. Interesting findings regarding the relationships among perfectionism, neuroticism and drive for muscularity/body dissatisfaction also emerged. Implications of the study, strengths, limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed.
Johnny, are you queer? : the sexual and gender politics of ambiguous sexual identity
(2015-05) Beaver, Travis Dean; Carrington, Ben, 1972-; Bridges, Tristan; Moore, Lisa; Rudrappa, Sharmila; Young, Michael
A number of scholars have pointed to the increasing visibility and acceptance of gays and lesbians in Western nations since the 1990s. One of the potential ramifications of these changes is a transformation in the construction of heterosexual identities. Some masculinities scholars have found evidence that heterosexual masculinity is changing to be more inclusive of practices that have been stereotyped as “gay” or “feminine.” This dissertation adds nuance to these findings by studying straight-identified men who claim to be perceived as gay. Through life history interviews with 20 men, I examine the ways that ambiguous heterosexuals manage their sexual identity. I find that many of the men in my study self-identify as “feminine” men on account of their practices, comportment, and emotional traits. I highlight how the meanings of these “feminine” gender practices are inflected by men’s class positions and racial identities. I also show how these men struggle to claim a straight identity in a culture where effeminacy is still conflated with being gay. Next, I explore the ways that straight people experience and make sense of being targets of homophobia. I found that most of my respondents experienced homophobia raging from the explicit and overt to more subtle forms of homophobic microaggressions on account of being gender non-normative. However, I demonstrate how they draw on heterosexual privilege to mitigate negative social consequences that result from being read as gay. Finally, I show how ambiguous straight men’s sexual identities are validated or undermined through their interactions with women.
Life, land, and labor on Avery Island in the 1920s and 1930s
(2011-05) Boutte, Charity Michelle; Thompson, Shirley Elizabeth; Tang, Eric, 1974-
Avery Island, Louisiana and McIlhenny Company provide a lens through which to understand how performances of masculinity and paternalism operated in the New South and were deployed for U. S. empire-building projects. Focusing on the tenure of Edward Avery McIlhenny as President of McIlhenny Company, this paper utilizes primary documents from the McIlhenny Company & Avery Island, Inc. Archives to construct a narrative based on correspondence between E. A. and his Wall Street investment banker, Ernest B. Tracy, revealing how E.A. confronted disaster capitalism and influenced the production of cultural tourism amidst environmental and economic crises in the 1920s and 1930s.
Mapping kingship : the cultivation of masculinity in the treatise of Walter de Milemete (Oxford, Christ Church MS 92)
(2017-05) Dimartino, Caitlin Irene; Holladay, Joan A.
The stages of illumination for Walter de Milemete’s De nobilitatibus, sapientiis et prudentiis regum, a mirror for princes written for the newly-crowned Edward III, bridges a politically and socially volatile period in the history of medieval England. Given the failed reign and contested masculinity of king Edward II, the subsequent deposition staged by his wife, Queen Isabella of France, and the troubling regency of the queen after the coronation of her son, Edward III, it comes as little surprise that the text of this manuscript emphasizes the importance of good governance and the virtues most important for a young king to cultivate. This didactic function of the treatise and the complementary illumination program— in which humans, animals, monsters, and hybrids pose and perform inside thick borders across almost every page — has long been stressed in studies on the visual aspects of the manuscript. Yet to be addressed is the role that medieval notions of elite masculinity, which greatly influenced the legacies of Edward I, Edward II, and Edward III, have played in the creation of both the text and image in the treatise. My thesis explores the intended reception of the Milemete treatise in relation to the political climate of the early fourteenth century, the contested masculinity of Edward II and subsequent problems that arose from his lack of manliness, and the need for Edward III to cultivate and exemplify maturity in the form of controlling himself, controlling the court and his mother, and leading successful campaigns against such enemies as Scotland, in order to succeed as king and legitimize his own rule. I argue that the illumination program was intended to condition Edward III to recognize, understand, and then embody aspects of masculinity and kingship that would ultimately help him establish himself as a chivalric, capable, and autonomous ruler. The visual landscape of the manuscript was an embodiment of Edward’s personal, internal quest to reach majority and encouraged him to conceptually “travel” through the borders’ allusions to ideal kingship and masculinity and, in the process, reevaluate his own self-identification as a virtuous and legitimate king.
Masculinity at the video game arcade : 1972-1983
(2012-05) Kocurek, Carly Ann; Engelhardt, Elizabeth S. D. (Elizabeth Sanders Delwiche), 1969-
As the United States shifted toward a service-based economy and an increasingly digital media environment, American youth -- particularly young men and boys -- found an opportunity to play with these values in the then-novel video game arcade. The video game industry first came of age between the successful commercialization of Pong in 1972 and the U.S. gaming industry crash of 1983. In the interim, economic and play practices in the arcade itself and media representations of the arcade and its habitués shaped and responded to the economic and cultural upheavals of the period. Arcade machines were the first computers many Americans confronted. Through public discourse about gaming and gamers, Americans engaged in a critical debate about computerization, the move to digital media culture, the restructuring of the U.S. labor economy, and the competitiveness of American youth -- particularly boys -- in a Cold War culture conceived as both hostile and technologically oriented. This study demonstrates that video gaming was an arena in which Americans grappled with larger tensions about masculinity, globalization, labor, and digitalization. By analyzing gaming as a practice of everyday life, this work not only offers a cultural history of this period of gaming, but critical insights into the crystallization of masculine identity in a postindustrial, postmodern economy.