Wounded Masculinities

This book contributes to the emerging field of men’s health studies, delving into how men incorporate, adapt, negotiate, or reject health care practices to perform masculinities in social interactions. By moving beyond the simplistic association between men, masculinity and the adoption of ‘risky’ or ‘unhealthy’ practices, this book draws from recent critical perspectives on the study of men’s health, seeking to challenge and problematize the relationship between masculinities and health. The text presents original empirical findings derived from qualitative and digital research examining the different ways in which men (re)negotiate their masculinities after the onset of a chronic illness, focusing on diabetes as a strategic case study. Living with a chronic illness implies that those gender practices that are usually taken for granted suddenly become unachievable and impose a reconfiguration of the masculine self, as well as a negotiation of the very meaning of masculinity. The volume aims to critically examine this interactive process of (re)negotiation, while also reflecting on men, masculinities and their health on a more general level. This book serves as a valuable resource for students and scholars in social sciences working on the intersection of gender and health, as well as for health professionals seeking a deeper understanding of the connection between men, gender and health.

Modern men are wounded by historical and cultural developments as well as by specific family problems. Traditional masculinity is a straitjacket that forces men to repress all their emotions under an "I-can-handle-it" facade -- a facade that enourages men to become emotionally numb, unable to feel joy as well as sadness. But men don't have to live this way. THE WOUNDED MALE describes the sources and consequences of the many wounds men receive from society and family, including the "father wound" (how the physical or emotional absence of a father or a father-as-rigid-disciplinarian can profoundly affect a growing boy) and the "mother wound" (which is rooted in the extremes of too much mothering -- engulfing -- or too little mothering -- abandoning). Farmer personalizes his analysis with examples from his own life and the lives of other men. He shows that healing the wounds of manhood is not a one-shot deal, but a long, slow journey of self-discovery. Whether you are just setting out on that journey or wish to travel farther and deeper, you will find THE WOUNDED MALE an indispensable companion.

This book analyzes popular American films that point to the need for father atonement, ego-decentering, and the resurrection of the lost feminine to heal gendered cultural wounds, while affirming the role of meaningful suffering, compassion, self-sacrifice and transcendence as an antidote to the inevitable woundedness of the human condition.

Bringing together an array of interdisciplinary voices, Global Masculinities and Manhood examines the concept of masculinity from the perspectives of cultures around the world. Contributors to this volume deconstruct the history and politics of masculinities within the contexts of the cultures from which they have been developed, examining what makes a man who he is within his own culture. Highlighting manifestations of masculinity in countries including Jamaica, Turkey, Peru, Kenya, Australia, and China, scholars from a variety of disciplines grapple with topics including how masculinity is affected by war and conflict, defined in relation to race, ethnicity, and sexuality, and expressed in cultural activities such as sports or the cinema. Contributors are Bryant Keith Alexander, Molefi K. Asante, Murali Balaji, Maurice Hall, Ronald L. Jackson II, Shino Konishi, Nil Mutluer, Mich Nyawalo, Kathleen Glenister Roberts, Margarita Saona, and Kath Woodward.

This edited collection presents a selection of essays on the history of Irish masculinities. Beginning with representations of masculinity in eighteenth-century drama, economics, and satire, and concluding with work on the politics of masculinity post Good-Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, the collection advances the importance of masculinities in our understanding of Irish history and historiography. Using a variety of approaches, including literary and legal theory as well as cultural, political and local histories, this collection illuminates the differing forms, roles, and representations of Irish masculinities. Themes include the politicisation of Irishmen in both the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland; muscular manliness in the Irish Diaspora; Orangewomen and political agency; the disruptive possibility of the rural bachelor; and aspirational constructions of boyhood. Several essays explore how masculinity is constructed and performed by women, thus emphasizing the necessity of differentiating masculinity from maleness. These essays demonstrate the value of gender and masculinities for historical research and the transformative potential of these concepts in how we envision Ireland’s past, present, and future.

From the romantic liaisons of Peter the Great to the birth of the Russian 'queen', this collection of essays presents recent research from the new field of Russian masculinity studies. Peasant patriarchs, aristocratic dandies, anxious young bureaucrats, workers in search of father figures, heroic warriors, promiscuous bathhouse attendants and vodka-soaked athletic stars populate this volume. Its essays take as a starting point the notion that masculinity, like femininity, has a history.

The literary study of emotion is part of an important revisionary movement among scholars eager to recast emotional politics for the twenty-first century. Looking beyond the traditional categories of sentiment, sensibility, and sympathy, Jennifer Travis suggests a new approach to reading emotionalism among men. She argues that the vocabulary of injury, with its evaluations of victimhood and its assessments of harm, has deeply influenced the cultural history of emotions. From the Civil War to the early twentieth century, Travis traces the history of male emotionalism in American discourse. She argues that injury became a comfortable vocabulary--particularly among white middle-class men--through which to articulate and to claim a range of emotional wounds. The debates about injury that flourished in the cultural arenas of medicine, psychology, and the law spilled over into the realm of fiction, as Travis demonstrates through readings of works by Stephen Crane, William Dean Howells, Willa Cather, Henry James, and Edith Wharton. Travis concludes by linking this history to twenty-first-century preoccupations with "pain-centered politics," which, she cautions, too often focuses only on women and racial minorities.

Never before has period drama offered viewers such an assortment of complex male characters, from transported felons and syphilitic detectives to shell shocked soldiers and gangland criminals. Neo-Victorian Gothic fictions like Penny Dreadful represent masculinity at its darkest, Poldark and Outlander have refashioned the romantic hero and anti-heritage series like Peaky Blinders portray masculinity in crisis, at moments when the patriarchy was being bombarded by forces like World War I, the rise of first wave feminism and the breakdown of Empire. Scholars of film, media, literature and history explore the very different types of maleness offered by contemporary television and show how the intersection of class, race, history and masculinity in period dramas has come to hold such broad appeal to twenty-first-century audiences.