Recently, the U.S. has seen a rise in misogynistic and race-based violence perpetrated by men expressing a sense of grievance, from "incels" to alt-right activists. Grounding sociological, historical, political, and economic analyses of masculinity through the lens of cultural narratives in many forms and expressions, The Routledge Companion to Masculinity in American Literature and Culture suggests that how we examine the stories that shape us in turn shapes our understanding of our current reality and gives us language for imagining better futures.

Masculinity is more than a description of traits associated with particular performances of gender. It is more than a study of gender and social power. It is an examination of the ways in which gender affects our capacity to engage ethically with each other in complex human societies. This volume offers essays from a range of established, global experts in American masculinity as well as new and upcoming scholars in order to explore not just what masculinity once meant, has come to mean, and may mean in the future in the U.S.; it also articulates what is at stake with our conceptions of masculinity.

About the Author

Lydia R. Cooper is associate professor of contemporary American and Native American literature and chair of the department of English at Creighton University. She is the author of Cormac McCarthy: A Complexity Theory of Literature (2021); Masculinities in Literature of the American West (2016), and No More Heroes: Narrative Perspective and Morality in the Novels (2011). Her work on contemporary American and Native American writers has appeared in journals such as GLQ, Contemporary Literature, Modern Fiction Studies, Studies in the Novel, Critique, Studies in American Indian Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment.

Reviews

"Lydia Cooper has brought together a fascinating and formidable array of essays that brings the field of masculinity studies into the contemporary moment." Stacey Peebles, Associate Professor of English and Director of Film Studies, Centre College

"Lydia Cooper has brought together a fascinating and formidable array of essays that brings the field of masculinity studies into the contemporary moment."

Stacey Peebles, Associate Professor of English and Director of Film Studies, Centre College

Book Information
ISBN 9781032156620
Author Lydia R. Cooper
Format Paperback
Page Count 408
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 453g