"While feminist critics have re-invented the canon, studies of male authors have remained oddly ungendered. The authors in Peter Murphy's enlightening collection hold male authors up to a gender lens' to explore how in their lives and in their texts, these writers were working out issues of masculinity and sexuality. The refreshing results cross all boundaries cultural, sexual, even disciplinary."
--Michael S. Kimmel, SUNY, Stony Brook, Editor, "Men's Lives" and "Men Confront Pornography"

We are just beginning to understand masculinity as a fiction or a localizable, historical, and therefore unstable construct. This book points the way to a much-needed interrogation of the many modes of masculinity, as represented in literature. Both women and men who are engaged in critical thinking about genders and sexualities will find these essays always thoughtful and often provocative.
--Thas E. Morgan, Associate Professor of English, Arizona State University

Peter Murphy has assembled an innovative, challenging, and important set of contributions to a growing field of inquiry into constructions of masculinities in literature, inspired principally by feminist and gay studies. Illuminatingly crossing lines of genders, sexualities, cultures, and methodologies, "Fictions of Masculinity" greatly advances our understanding of representations of men, masculinities, misandry, and misogyny in a wide range of literary works and genres, and helps us to imagine (and thereby ultimately bring about) alternative constructions.
--Harry Brod, Editor, "The Making of Masculinities: The New Men's Studies," "A Mensch Among Men: Explorations in Jewish Masculinity, and Theorizing Masculinities,"

Women writing about women dominates contemporary work on sexuality. Men have been far more willing to discuss female sexuality than male sexuality, while the most radical and insightful analyses of male sexuality have come from women. When men consider the issue of female sexuality they often speak from assumptions of security about their own unexamined sexuality. This book maintains that men have to interrogate their own sexuality if there is to be a revision of phallocentric discourse; and, that this revision of masculinity must be done in dialogue with women.

The essays included in this collection examine the deep structure of masculine codes. They ask the question Who are the men in modern literature? Examining the force of the dominant values of Western masculinity, they synthesize insights from feminism, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, and new historicism. These perspectives help explain how male sexuality has been structured by fictional representations.

By examining the images of masculinity in modern literature, the essays explore traditional and non-traditional roles of men in society and in personal relationships. They look at how men are represented in literature, the fiction of manhood. They attempt to unravel the assumptions behind these representations by looking at the implications of this imagination. And they speculate on possibilities for creating a new imaginary of masculinity by identifying what literature has to say about that change.

With analyses of a range of genres (novels, poetry, plays and autobiography), Western and Third World literatures, and theoretical perspectives, "Fictions of Masculinity" provides a significant contribution to thisrapidly growing field of study.
Contributors are: David Bergman (Towson State University), Miriam Cooke (Duke University), Martin Danahy (Emory University), Richard Dellamora (Trent University, Ontario), Leonard Duroche (University of Minnesota), Jim Elledge (Illinois State University), Alfred Habegger (University of Kansas), Suzanne Kehde (California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo), David Leverenz (University of Florida), Christopher Metress (Wake Forest University), Peter F. Murphy (SUNY, Empire State College), Rafael Prez-Torres (University of Pennsylvania), David Radavich (Eastern Illinois University), and Peter Schwenger (St. Vincent University, Nova Scotia).

This work explores, through case studies and critical analyses, how media depictions affect the social construction of gender, sexuality, and identity. Through a combination of historical and contemporary topics, scholars examine the stereotypical portrayal of women and men and the contexts within which these stereotypes are illustrated. The studies also discuss the sociopolitical implications of symbols and images associated with these gender representations. Concrete references to particular media support both the methodological and theoretical approaches of the different essays. These quantitative and qualitative studies expose the myriad ways in which the media intervenes in our perception of popular culture.

Media and mass communication scholars will appreciate the many different media forms these essays encompass. The multicultural and gendered perspectives that comprise these writings will also appeal to students and educators of gender studies and contemporary rhetoric. Chapters are grouped in subsections that include newspaper, visual image in media, magazine, television, video, film, and cyberspace.

From the smiling, sentimental mothers portrayed in 1930s radio barn dance posters, to the sexual shockwaves generated by Elvis Presley, to the female superstars redefining contemporary country music, gender roles and imagery have profoundly influenced the ways country music is made and enjoyed. Proper male and female roles have influenced the kinds of sounds and images that could be included in country music; preconceptions of gender have helped to determine the songs and artists audiences would buy or reject; and gender has shaped the identities listeners made for themselves in relation to the music they revered.

This interdisciplinary collection of essays is the first book-length effort to examine how gender conventions, both masculine and feminine, have structured the creation and marketing of country music. The essays explore the uses of gender in creating the personas of stars as diverse as Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline, and Shania Twain. The authors also examine how deeply conventions have influenced the institutions and everyday experiences that give country music its image: the popular and fan press, the country music industry in Nashville, and the line dance crazes that created the dance hall boom of the 1990s.

From Hank Thompson's "The Wild Side of Life" to Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue," from Tammy Wynette's "Stand by Your Man" to Loretta Lynn's ode to birth control, "The Pill," "A Boy Named Sue" demonstrates the role gender played in the development of country music and its current prominence.

Kristine M. McCusker is a professor of history at Middle Tennessee State University.

Diane Pecknold is an independent scholar in Chicago, Illinois.

How can depressed communities be upgraded? One approach is to import settlers with higher incomes. In a unique experiment in Israel, this approach was utilized, and the results are the focus of the Ayalon, Ben-Rafael, and Yogev study.

The three authors examine the costs and benefits of an experiment in community change in Mobiltown. The experiment, which brought higher status people to a poor community, is evaluated on the basis of surveys, indepth interviews, and observations. The research shows that the experiment has mainly resulted in the status enhancement of the community as a whole. Yet, expectations for social integration between the new and veteran residents were not fulfilled. Many of the cultural, economic, commercial, and social developments were based on some form of implicit segregation. The dynamics of unbalanced outcomes are demonstrated in the areas of intergroup attitudes, the formation of social networks, and in the political and educational arenas. The Mobiltown experiment demonstrates how the cost of newly introduced social gaps are countered by the benefits of the status enhancement of the entire community. An important study for sociologists, urban planners, and those concerned with social change in Israel.

This book examines the ways in which women's experiences of poverty lead to particular demographic outcomes. It also shows the paths by which demographic events may determine women's ability to achieve well-being and escape from poverty and it makes explicit the specific circumstances that poor women face in trying to attain a healthy life for themselves and their children.

This book examines female-headed households (FHHs) in the world economy, aspects of their poverty, and the implications of those for sustainable development. Following a general discussion of FHHs in the world community, the work discusses FHHs in two regions of India, one being an example of unsuccesssful development and the other of successful development. The research is based on fieldwork in five rural villages. One village, comprising mostly female-headed households, provided a unique case study. The other four villages include both male- and female-headed households with a high proportion of female-headed households.

The authors found that female-headed households dominate the poorer sections of the community, and women's access to resources is limited by cultural, social, and economic influences. Women, particularly those in FHHs, bear the heaviest burdens in times of economic hardship. These women face more forms of discrimination outside the home than women from male-headed households. They have fewer customary rights but greater freedom of movement and more opportunities for paid employment. The authors go on to show that the benefits of government development programs have not reached remote areas. The trickle-down approach has not worked, but sustainable development programs focusing on women's development and self-responsiblity have helped to lift the economic status of women in general and FHHs in particular.

Alfred Hitchcock is said to have once remarked, "Actors are cattle," a line that has stuck in the public consciousness ever since. For Hitchcock, acting was a matter of contrast and counterpoint, valuing subtlety and understatement over flashiness. He felt that the camera was duplicitous, and directed actors to look and act conversely. In The Camera Lies, author Dan Callahan spotlights the many nuances of Hitchcock's direction throughout his career, from Cary Grant in Notorious (1946) to Janet Leigh in Psycho (1960). Delving further, he examines the ways that sex and sexuality are presented through Hitchcock's characters, reflecting the director's own complex relationship with sexuality. Detailing the fluidity of acting - both what it means to act on film and how the process varies in each actor's career - Callahan examines the spectrum of treatment and direction Hitchcock provided well- and lesser-known actors alike, including Ingrid Bergman, Henry Kendall, Joan Barry, Robert Walker, Jessica Tandy, Kim Novak, and Tippi Hedren. As Hitchcock believed, the best actor was one who could "do nothing well" - but behind an outward indifference to his players was a sophisticated acting theorist who often drew out great performances. The Camera Lies unpacks Hitchcock's legacy both as a director who continuously taught audiences to distrust appearance, and as a man with an uncanny insight into the human capacity for deceit and misinterpretation.

Gerard Loughlin is one of the leading theologians working at the interface between religion and contemporary culture. In this exceptional work, he uses cinema and the films it shows to think about the church and the visions of desire it displays.
Discusses various films, including the Alien quartet, Christopher Nolan's Memento, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange, Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth and Derek Jarman's The Garden.
Draws on a wide range of authors, both ancient and modern, religious and secular, from Plato to Levinas, from Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar to Andre Bazin and Leo Bersani.
Uses cinema to think about the church as an ecclesiacinema, and films to think about sexual desire as erotic dispossession, as a way into the life of God.
Written from a radically orthodox Christian perspective, at once both Catholic and critical.

During the 1960s, Margaret Mead's argument that gender identity is a product of learning in particular cultural contexts was incorporated into the sex/gender system in feminist theory. In this system, sex refers to physiological differences in the body and gender refers to learned sex-specific bodies to be viewed as separate and distinct from gender-neutral minds. In S/He Brain, Nadeau demonstrates that the sex/gender systemis not some arcane bit of academic jargon that has no impact on our daily lives. It is the greatest source of division and conflict in the politics of our sexual lives for a now obvious reason: the brains of men and women are not the same, and the differences have behavioral consequences. Further, he argues that an improved understanding of the relatinship between sex and gender could enlarge the bases for meaningful dialogue between men and women and lead to new standards for sexual equality that is more realistic and humane than the current standard. The individual most responsible for legitimating the modern distinction between sex and gender was the anthropologist Margaret Mead. According to the Mead doctrine, gender identity is almost entirely a product of learning in different cultural contexts, and sex, or biological reality, is not a determinant of this identity. The assumption that gender identity is learned in sexless, or gender-neutral, minds separate and distinct from sex-specific bodies legitimated the sex/gender system that has been foundational to feminist theory since the mid 1970s. In this system, sex refers to physiological differences in the domain of the body and gender to learned behavior in the domain of mind. Since this two-domain distinction obviated the connection between biological reality and gender identity, it allowed gender identity to be viewed as scripted or socially constructed by cultural narratives (stories, myths, legends, and the like) invented by men to control and oppress women. In ^IS/He Brain^R, Nadeau demonstrates that the sex/gender system is not in accord with biological reality for now obvious reasons-the brains of men and women are not the same, and the differences have behavioral consequences. Yet the intent of the book is to serve the cause of full sexual equality and not to escalate the gender war. Nadeau attempts to accomplish this by demonstrating that an improved understanding of the relationship between sex and gender can not only enlarge the bases for meaningful communication between men and women. It could also serve as the basis for a new and improved standard of sexual equality that eliminates the grossly unfair treatment of women sanctioned by the current standard.

How does feminism shake up political science, the study of politics and electoral politics? What difference do feminist political scientists and politicians make to political institutions, policy processes and outcomes? The scholarship and activism of pioneering feminist political scientist Professor Joni Lovenduski helped establish these questions on the political science agenda. This book addresses key themes in Lovenduski's seminal work. State-of-the-art chapters by leading scholars cover gender and parties; elected institutions and the state; quotas and recruitment; public opinion and women's interests. Vignettes by prominent politicians and practitioners, including Dame Anne Begg MP, Baroness Gould, Deborah Mattinson, and the Rt Hon Theresa May, bring the academic analysis to life. Deeds and Words reveals the impact of feminist interventions on politics in the round. Its groundbreaking assessment of feminist scholarship and politics offers an appraisal of, and fitting tribute to, Lovenduski's own contribution to gender studies and feminist politics.

Throughout the Western world our social fabric is being transformed, leaving few lives untouched. Girls growing up today face huge changes in the organization of family, education, and work.

Growing Up Girl explores the lives of girls who have grown up in the last decades of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. It explores the complexities of class transformation as young women approach a radically altered labor market and examines the profound but different regulation to which young women of all social positions are subjected. Tracing three groups of girls from their early childhood to young adulthood, the volume sheds light on the social, cultural, and psychological dynamics confronting young women today. It highlights the fragility and the fiction of the "I can have everything" girls, providing a ground-breaking and sobering antidote to platitudes about a feminine future. Growing Up Girl is essential reading for all those concerned with the lives of girls and women today.

This study offers a radical rereading of Conrad's work in the light of contemporary theories of masculinity. Drawing on gay studies, feminism, film theory and literary theory, the author aims to show how Conrad's fiction, even as it reflects certain assumptions of its day about the role of men in society, offers striking insights into the instability of the 'masculine. The book explores the relationship of masculinity with colonialism, modernity, the visual and the body in a wide range of Conrad's major and lesser known fiction.

Dworkin and Wachs analyze 10 years of health and fitness magazines to uncover how bodies are made in popular culture Are you ripped? Do you need to work on your abs? Do you know your ideal body weight? Your body fat index? Increasingly, Americans are being sold on a fitness ideal-not just thin but toned, not just muscular but cut-that is harder and harder to reach. In Body Panic, Shari L. Dworkin and Faye Linda Wachs ask why. How did these particular body types come to be "fit"? And how is it that having an unfit, or "bad," body gets conflated with being an unfit, or "bad," citizen? Dworkin and Wachs head to the newsstand for this study, examining ten years worth of men's and women's health and fitness magazines to determine the ways in which bodies are "made" in today's culture. They dissect the images, the workouts, and the ideology being sold, as well as the contemporary links among health, morality, citizenship, and identity that can be read on these pages. While women and body image are often studied together, Body Panic considers both women's and men's bodies side-by-side and over time in order to offer a more in-depth understanding of this pervasive cultural trend.

In the 1930s, Freud observed that "when you meet a human being, the first distinction you make is `male or female?' and you are accustomed to make the distinction with unhesitating certainty." As Freud suggests, society is divisible by gender. We are taken to be either "male" or "female." This notion seems to be fixed within our culture and is often unquestioned. In this dynamic book, fashion journalist Laura Cherrie Beaney examines gender as a concept and as a practice that is also challenged and contested in the fashion industry. While gender has been relatively fixed within our society, we are nevertheless entertained by "gender bending." The media and entertainment industries now represent a range of gender identities. As much as it is a cultural phenomenon, gender is also an individual practice. Social theorists describe some individuals as "gender outlaws" for actively choosing to blend and shape their own gender identities. Fashionable clothing makes multiple statements about the wearer. It can identify social status and tell the viewer, "This is the type of person I am." In contemporary culture, fashion designers, stylists, photographers, and other media professionals have been fascinated with the idea of gender and its ever-changing boundaries. In recent years, the fashion industry has also focused on ideas of unisex identity and androgyny. Indeed, the fashion industry seems to afford a decadent sense of power to alternative gender identities. Fashion designers and stylists have been inspired by alternative gender identities when creating images and when showcasing their designs. Crossing the Catwalk explores fashion to understand how this mediated image of gender equality in the twenty-first century relates to reality by examining cross-dressing and transvestism through the construction of personal style. By using case studies from a range of different sources, the book will give a clear idea of how the reality of cross-dressing compares to the glamorous and decadent images portrayed by the fashion industry. It will aim to uncover the true motivations for those who cross dress and analyze the construction of gendered personal styles in relation to fashion.

Although most historical and contemporary religions are governed by men, there are, scattered throughout the world, a handful of well-documented religions led by women. Most of these are marginal, subordinate, or secondary religions in the societies in which they are located. The one known exception to this rule is the indigenous religion of Okinawa, where women lead the official mainstream religion of the society. This book is the first in-depth look at this unique religious tradition, exploring the intersection between religion and gender. Based on fieldwork in an Okinawan village, Susan Sered argues that the absence of male dominance in the religious sphere is part of a broader absence of hiearchical ideologies and cultural patterns. In addition to providing important information on this remarkable and little-studied group, this book helps to overturn our mostly unexamined assumptions that male dominance of the religious sphere is universal, axiomatic, and necessary.

This authored book assesses the spatial patterns of climate change and gender inequalities across the Global South, and analyzes the disproportionate impacts that climate change processes have on women in these regions. Though many books attempt to incorporate gender issues into climate change, this book examines the issue as a whole by addressing the relationship between climate change and gender from a number of perspectives. The book incorporates case studies from various regions of the Global South, a designation broadly defined as the countries of Africa, Middle and South America, and most of Asia including the Middle East. In the book's two main sections, readers will learn about how climate change affects access to regional opportunities and resources, the obstacles created by climate change that affect women more strongly than men, and how affected female populations adapt to changing conditions and protect their local livelihoods. Section one, covering chapters 1 and 2, addresses the spatial patterns of climate change and gender inequalities/inequities across the Global South by analyzing long-term trends from the latest reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the World Economic forum. Section two, covering chapters 3 through 7, discusses the critical issues related to climate change and gender inequality, and presents literature reviews and case studies in the Global South. The different issues and perspectives discussed include health, water and food security, education, conflicts, migration, participation in decision-making processes, and changing urban social landscapes. The concluding chapter discusses policy initiatives and makes recommendations to some of the gender mainstreaming through empowerment and participation. This interdisciplinary book will appeal to academics and policy-makers beyond just the fields of environmental sciences and gender studies, and may be adopted as a resource for graduate students and researchers.

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Read the Introduction.

"Patricia McDaniel provides an insightful look at the historical construction of shyness in Western scoiety. This book is an important contribution to the literature on the sociology of emotions and the sociology of gender."--"Contemporary Sociology"

"This book's significance lies in its treatment of an emotional state and in its use of documents that have heretofore received little attention from historians."
--"The Jourrnal of American History"

"In this thoroughy researched study, McDaniel pretty much provides anything any academic might ever want to kow about shyness in society."
--" Library Journal"

Since World War II Americans' attitudes towards shyness have changed. The women's movement and the sexual revolution raised questions about communication, self-expression, intimacy, and personality, leading to new concerns about shyness. At the same time, the growth of psychotherapy and the mental health industry brought shyness to the attention of professionals who began to regard it as an illness in need of a cure. But what is shyness? How is it related to gender, race, and class identities? And what does its stigmatization say about our culture?

In Shrinking Violets and Caspar Milquetoasts, Patricia McDaniel tells the story of shyness. Using popular self-help books and magazine articles she shows how prevailing attitudes toward shyness frequently work to disempower women. She draws on evidence as diverse as 1950s views of shyness as a womanly virtue to contemporary views of shyness as a barrier to intimacy to highlight how cultural standards governing shyness reproduce and maintain power differencesbetween and among women and men.

Pedagogies of Possibility for Negotiating Sexuality Education with Young People offers a sustained and critical consideration of the possibilities and politics of engaging with young people in the redevelopment and delivery of contemporary approaches to Sexuality Education. Drawing on research undertaken as part of an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage grant, this book explores the affordances, tensions and challenges of participatory methodologies and pedagogies that authorize young people's perspectives and visions for Sexuality Education. Foregrounded are the contradictions between what young people want to learn more about and the risky forms of praxis that are necessary to engage with various understandings of Sexuality Education and the important role of adult allies in supporting young people to navigate these contradictions. Each chapter chronicles and captures both adult allies and young people's experiences of the project by drawing on data produced through visual-arts based methods and various ethnographic techniques, such as participant observation, focus group interviews, and guided conversations.

Luce Irigaray: Teaching explores ways to confront new issues in education. Three essays byIrigaray herself present the outcomes of her own experiments in this area and develop proposals for teaching people how to coexist in difference, reach self-affection, and rethink the relations between teachers and students. In the last few years, Irigaray has brought together young academics from various countries, universities and disciplines, all of whom were carrying out research into her work. These research students have received personal instruction from Irigaray and at the same time have learnt from one another by sharing with the group their own knowledge and experience. Most of the essays in this book are the result of this dynamic way of learning that fosters rigour in thinking as well as mutual respect for differences. The central themes of the volume focus on five cultural fields: methods of recovery from traumatic personal or cultural experience; the resources that arts offer for dwelling in oneself and with the other(s); the maternal order and feminine genealogy; creative interpretation and embodiment of the divine; and new perspectives in philosophy. This innovative collaborative project between Irigaray and researchers involved in the study of her work gives a unique insight into the topics that have occupied this influential international theorist over the last thirty years.

This edited volume focuses on women’s empowerment for a sustainable future. It takes cultural and transcultural and positive psychology perspectives into consideration and explores the topic of women’s empowerment from diverse stances, across social strata, cultural divides as well as economic and political divisions. It addresses the critique of the overly Western focus of positive psychology on this topic by adopting a transnational and transcultural lens, and by taking non-WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) samples into in-depth consideration. The chapters therefore focus on women from diverse socio-cultural, political, socio-economic backgrounds and discuss their ways of empowering others and being empowered. They also discuss related positive psychology constructs, such as: coping, resilience, transformation, growth, leadership, creativity, identity development, sustainable action, as well as positive socio-economic, political and eco-sustainable thought and action. The volume as a whole looks at women's leadership as a factor of empowerment. A further fundamental assumption is that women’s empowerment is needed to create a sustainable future at micro-, meso- and macro levels, which presumes safety, peace, ecological considerations, and compassionate leadership. 

This book features the best papers presented at the Singapore Conference on Applied Psychology in 2016. Chapters include research conducted by experts in the field of applied psychology from the Asia-Pacific region, and cover areas such as community and environmental psychology, psychotherapy and counseling, health, child and school psychology, and gender studies. Put together by East Asia Research (Singapore), in collaboration with Hong Kong Shue Yan University, this book serves as a valuable resource for readers wanting to access to the latest research in the field of applied psychology with a focus on Asia-Pacific.

"Goth Culture" explores Goths' expressive practices of dress, fashion, style and the body, in relation to issues of identity and representation.  The book shares vivid accounts of the author's experiences exploring gender and sexuality and doing fieldwork in the Gothic subculture. Through the voices of Goths from the UK, US and Germany, it draws the reader into the gender-bending and heavily gendered world of Goth. It reassesses the significance of the dress of both male and female Goths, examining these striking and often highly creative subcultural fashion displays. Using a wide range of methods and sources, from ethnography to critical examination of music, literature, social theory and different types of popular media, "Goth Culture" offers an original and accessible analysis of the fashion, media and counterculture of the Gothic world.

The words and grammatical structure of a given language are the most basic building blocks of thought and communication; they reflect the ways speakers conceptualize themselves and their world and communicate with others. Since language reflects a culture's biases and inequities, a socially constructed, gendered power differential between men and women may lead each to have very different relationships to language. The essays in this collection explore some of the ways in which power and its expression (or repression) is gendered. The contributors seek to discover contexts and patterns within which power is articulated, reproduced, and ultimately transformed. While some contributors provide primarily descriptive examinations of presumed gender differences, others seek to critique or deconstruct these supposed meanings associated with gender and power relationships. An important collection for scholars and researchers involved with communication and with gender issues.

The way that we have perceived, described, and understood sexual desire has changed dramatically over time and across cultures. This collection brings together a group of experts from a variety of disciplines to explore the history of sexual desires and the transformation of sexual ideas, attitudes, and practices in premodern Europe. Among the topics considered are the visibility of sexual offenses and the construction of passions; the geographical range extends to Great Britain, with extended attention also to France as well as Northern and Eastern Europe. The result is a groundbreaking volume that adds significantly to our understanding of premodern European history, history of sexualities, gender studies, religious history, and many other fields.