HIST-LIT 90HP: Manliness and Civilization

Instructor: Nicholas Bloom
Meeting time: Thursday, 9:45-11:45 am

Countless podcast hours and think-pieces are currently being devoted to the crisis in American masculinity, from boys’ lagging test scores to the “male loneliness epidemic.” Rather than try to solve these problems as such, this class will ask: why is this apparent crisis in masculinity a national problem, with implications for the well-being of the nation itself? When else has masculinity been in “crisis,” and what are the material, political, and cultural conditions that have typically produced crises in masculinity? Finally, why do crises in racial dominance structures, class, and sexuality so often go hand-in-hand with crises in the nature and definition of manhood? This class will trace these questions from the mid-19th century to the present, with a focus on the United States but with significant reference to histories and readings beyond the US as well. Course material features literature, film, music, political thought, and scholarly historical and theoretical sources. Possible texts by Herman Melville, Ida B. Wells, Teddy Roosevelt, Leslie Marmon Silko, C.L.R. James, Hazel Carby, Toni Morrison, Frank Capra, bell hooks, Gail Bederman, Hortense Spillers, James Baldwin, Martin Scorsese, Virginia Woolf, Johnny Cash, and others.