American (Mass)culinities: Sexuality, Race and Aesthetics

This course explores masculinity in American popular cultures since 1945. Starting with theories of homosociality, racial and gender formation at the turn of the century, to modern and post-modern cultural productions that visualize or narrativize "masculinity" including novels, films, and video. Through frameworks of psychoanalytic theory, queer theory and critical race theory we think about masculinity as narrative, as a set of discourses, an epistemology, an aesthetic and privileged form of Americana. How we understand the politics of race and sexuality through images of male bodies? What it means to decouple masculinity and men? What are the relationships between gender/genre? Enrollment limited to 17 first year students and sophomores.