While masculinity studies enjoy considerable growth in the West, there is very little analysis of African masculinities. This volume explores what it means for an African to be masculine and how male identity is shaped by cultural forces. The editors believe that to tackle the important questions in Africa - the many forms of violence (wars, genocides, familial violence and crime) and the AIDS pandemic - it is necessary to understand how a combination of a colonial past, patriarchal cultural structures and a variety of religious and knowledge systems creates masculine identities and sexualities. The work done in the book particularly bears in mind how vulnerability and marginalization produce complex forms of male identity. The book is interdisciplinary and is the first in-depth and comprehensive study of African men as a gendered category.

Fills a gap in the international literature by offering new insights into the heterogeneous ways in which African men are performing, negotiating and experiencing masculinity. Through their analysis of the depictions in film and literature of masculinities in colonial, independent and post-independent Africa, the contributors open some key African texts to a more obviously politicized set of meanings. Collectively, the essays provide space for rethinking current theory on gender and masculinity: - how only some of the most popular theories in masculinity studies in the West hold true in African contexts; - howWestern masculinities react with indigenous masculinities on the continent; - how masculinity and femininity in Africa seem to reside more on a continuum of cultural practices than on absolutely opposite planes; - andhow generation often functions as a more potent metaphor than gender. Lahoucine Ouzgane is Associate Professor of English & Film Studies, University of Alberta, Canada.

This challenging book of essays outlines the great complexity, variety and difference of male identities in Islamic societies. From the Taliban orphanages of Afghanistan to the cafes of Morocco, from the experience of couples at infertility clinics in Egypt to that of Iraqi conscripts, these essays illustrate how the masculine gender is constructed and negotiated in the Islamic Ummah. The collection goes far beyond the traditional notion that Islamic masculinities are inseparable from the control of women. The essays outline an experience of the relation between spirituality and masculinity quite different from the prevailing Western norms. Drawing on sources ranging from modern Arabic literature to discussions of Muhammad's virility and Abraham's paternity, ISLAMIC MASCULINITIES portrays ways of being in the world that intertwine with non-Western conceptions of duty to the family, the state and the divine.