Migrant Masculinities in Women’s Writing


Book Description

This book examines the representation of masculinities in contemporary texts written by women who have immigrated into France or Canada from a range of geographical spaces. Exploring works by Léonora Miano (Cameroon), Fatou Diome (Senegal), Assia Djebar, Malika Mokeddem (Algeria), Ananda Devi (Mauritius), Ying Chen (China) and Kim Thúy (Vietnam), this study charts the extent to which migration generates new ways of understanding and writing masculinities. It draws on diverse theoretical perspectives, including postcolonial theory, affect theory and critical race theory, while bringing visibility to the many women across various historical and geographical terrains who write about (im)migration and the impact on men, even as these women, too, acquire a different position in the new society.




Border Masculinities


Book Description




National Manhood and the Creation of Modern Quebec


Book Description

This intellectual history explores how the idea of manhood shaped French Canadian culture and Quebec’s nationalist movement. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, Quebec was an agrarian society, and masculinity was rooted in the land and the family and informed by Catholic principles of piety and self-restraint. As the industrial era took hold, a new model was forged, built on the values of secularism and individualism. Jeffery Vacante’s perceptive analysis reveals how French Canadian intellectuals defined masculinity in response to imperialist English Canadian ideals. This “national manhood” would be disentangled from the workplace, the family, and the land and tied instead to one’s cultural identity. The new formulation was crucial in the larger struggle to modernize Quebec’s institutions while preserving French Canadian community, faith, and culture. It offered French Canadian men a way to remodel themselves, participate in industrial modernity, and still assert cultural authority.




Masculinities in Twentieth- and Twenty-first Century French and Francophone Literature


Book Description

The study of masculinities and gender identity in contemporary literature is relatively new and, with each year of this millennium, gains momentum. Indeed, as the women’s movement becomes forceful in developing nations, the question of tolerance to gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transvestites undergoes a similar process. At a time when women refuse to be subjected to war crimes, when they begin entering the workforce and realize the need to support their families independently, and when they refuse to remain in abusive marriages or remain silent in countries, where governments ignore their needs, men and women are questioning the meaning of gender in their culture and often seek alternatives to established gender roles. In some countries, this entails organized demonstrations for additional civil rights, while in others, the expression of sexual freedom remains a question of remaining silent or risking public execution. Thanks to the scholarly commitment of its authors, this book examines the range of masculine expression on three continents: Europe, Africa, and the Americas. In this collection, they write about men’s past and present challenges, male friendships, and male immigrants and outcasts. Paralleling the independence movement of France’s former colonies, the goal of this collection is to continue the expression of freedom toward understanding and tolerance of all variances of sexuality.




French Masculinities


Book Description

French Masculinities makes a valuable contribution to gender studies by presenting, for the first time, a comprehensive and critical overview of ideas of how virilité has been imagined in France from the Eighteenth century to the present. Incorporating insights of cultural and social historians as well as specialists in film and literature, this collection approaches masculinities in a complex and interdisciplinary manner that will appeal to a wide range of readers.




Canadian Men and Masculinities


Book Description

Canadian Men and Masculinities: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives is a provocative new volume that examines men and masculinity across Canadian history and culture and sets it against the broader context of neoliberal globalization. This edited collection adopts a multi-perspective social inquiry and interdisciplinary approach and takes into careful consideration the intersections of the social and historical construction of gender with race, social class, sexuality, bodily abilities, and other social justice factors. The chief aim of this book is to examine, from historical and contemporary perspectives, the production and performance of men, boys, and embodied masculinity within the Canadian context. Within this framework, Canadian Men and Masculinities explores a range of issues including modern fatherhood, black male athleticism, indigenous masculinities, wrestling, and body building. This volume will be a valuable resource for general readers and professionals in sociology, history, education, and social and gender studies.




What is Masculinity?


Book Description

Across history, the ideas and practices of male identity have varied much between time and place: masculinity proves to be a slippery concept, not available to all men, sometimes even applied to women. This book analyses the dynamics of 'masculinity' as both an ideology and lived experience - how men have tried, and failed, to be 'Real Men'.




Men of the World


Book Description

Men of the World will be seized upon by academics and activists facing up to the persistence, proliferation and transnationalization of patriarchies. - Cynthia Cockburn, City University, London and University of Warwick "This is an important, thought-provoking and incredibly timely book from one of the leading scholars in the field of men and masculinities. I cannot praise this wonderful book highly enough." - Richard Collier, Newcastle University "In this lively and engaging new book, Hearn looks back over nearly 40 years in feminist-framed studies of men and masculinities, and also forward to the futuristic scenarios through which gender power is currently evolving in transpatriarchal contexts." - Terrell Carver, University of Bristol What have men and globalization got to do with each other? How are men shaping and being shaped by globalization? How is globalization gendered? Why do many books on globalization fail to discuss gender relations? And why do many of those that do omit an explicit and developed analysis of men and gender relations? Men of the World brings together autobiographical reflections and memories on changing personal locations, contemporary empirical studies on major power processes, and up to date theoretical development. It considers the implications of debates on globalization for analyzing men, and the implications of debates on men and masculinities for globalization, transnational change and transnational patriarchies, as part of engagement and critique focused on the global North. Specific chapters address diverse transnational issues: transnational bodies and emotions in violence, violation and militarism; transnational organizing across states, big business, global finance, and activism; transnational movements in the environment, migration, and information and communication technologies and sexualities; and finally, challenges to the gender category of ′men′. An essential read for students and researchers of gender, sexuality, masculinity, intersectionality, and globalization across the social sciences. Jeff Hearn is Guest Faculty Research Professor, Gender Studies, Örebro University, Sweden; Professor of Management and Organization, Hanken School of Economics, Finland; Professor of Sociology, University of Huddersfield, UK.




Reception of Northrop Frye


Book Description

The Reception of Northrup Frye takes a thorough accounting of the presence of Frye in existing works and argues against Frye's diminishing status as an important critical voice.




Touching Beauty


Book Description

Kim Thúy is a literary phenomenon, rising in her first decade of writing to a level of international recognition that few Québécois writers ever attain. The Vietnamese-born author’s novels have garnered literary prize recognition and have been translated from French into twenty-nine languages in nearly forty countries. Touching Beauty is the first collection to focus solely on Thúy and her economical yet poetic storytelling style that expresses both the traumatic and the beautiful. Her writings, which manage to be culturally specific all while speaking to the fundamentals of the human condition, are examined within the context of what is known as migrant literature in Canada and are situated within the history of Vietnamese literature in French that grew out of the colonial period. Chapters explore food, identity, gender, and the role of writing in Thúy’s life and work. Thúy herself contributes an unpublished poem and an extended interview that focus on her ongoing struggle to find, and write, beauty amidst war, migration, poverty, and loss. Touching Beauty maps the themes that have, to date, animated a literary career of global relevance and enduring value and encourages a deeper appreciation of Thúy’s writing.