History of Modern Masculinity

Paper Topics

Gender and the Body

Male fashion

sports and society

male consumerism

dueling

hunting

mountain-climbing

body-building

Eugen Sandow

Charles Atlas

Olympic movement

fears of degeneracy (especially late 19th century)

Sylvester Graham

J. H. Kellogg

Sexuality

"sexual hygiene" (avoidance of sex and masturbation)

history of homosexuality

historical theories of sex difference

Marriage and Family

"separate spheres" in 19th century

fatherhood

male sociability and clubs

Politics of Masculinity

gentlemanly manners and politeness

political resistance to feminism and women's suffrage

working-class masculinity/ labor movement

manliness in wartime

nationalism

fascism

communism

Masculinity and Religion

Men's and women's roles in the churches

evangelicalism and manliness

gender and missions

"muscular Christianity"

"social purity" (anti-prostitution) movement

Charles Wentworth Higgninson

Billy Sunday

Malcolm X

Imperial Manliness

masculinity and racism

imperial heroism

gender in imperial ritual and propaganda

boy scouts

imperial literature for boys

sexuality and empire

Robert Baden-Powell

Rudyard Kipling

Teddy Roosevelt

Masculinity in Literature

Thomas Carlyle

Oscar Wilde

Rudyard Kipling

D. H. Lawrence

Horatio Alger

Ernest Hemmingway

Stephen Crane

Jack London

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Robert Bly

Westerns

war poems and novels (Civil War/WW I/ WW2)

Popular culture

self-help/advice books for men

men in history of film

advertising

pulp fiction

boy scouts

westerns

comic books