Comparative Masculinities: Categories and Practices

 Comparative Masculinities: Categories and Practices 

Course Description: 

This course invites students to ethnographically and theoretically explore the meanings and practices of gender and masculinity globally. The course will examine gender-related social phenomena including literary and artistic forms with a view to arriving at a critical and comparative understanding of formations of masculinity. The lectures, discussions and readings will focus on categories, processes and representations. Analytically, the course will focus on the following themes: modernization and patriarchy; femininity, homosexuality and hegemonic masculinity; nationalism; postcoloniality; masculinity and militarism; religion (Islam, Christianity and Judaism), fundamentalism and gender; as well as contemporary formations of masculinity (metrosexuals, lumbersexuals, hipsters and more). 

Learning Outcomes and Course Requirements: 

This course is an introductory class to masculinity studies. By the end of the term students should be able to analyze masculinity as a relational mode and identify the modus operandi of gender practices and discourses. Distinguishing between masculinity as collective category and masculinity as individual subjectivity, students should be able to use historical and ethnographic examples to assess the processes that reconfigure patriarchal power. The changing landscape of gender would inform a critical analysis of contemporary models of masculinities.