Course description: This course is a historical exploration of male roles from an interdisciplinary perspective, focusing on men as workers, friends, lovers, and fathers.  Consideration of the choices available to men under the impact of tradition, feminism, and a changing job market.  Gender-oriented social and political movements.  The majority of course topics address men, manhood and masculinities in U.S. history, though theoretical perspectives will engage the construction of masculinities world-wide and across time.

Course requirements: Regular attendance (10%), participation in “learning circle discussions” (20%), four short (2-3 page) papers (10% each), midterm (10%), and final examination (20%).   Students who fail to complete all assignments will not receive a passing course grade.  An attendance sign-in sheet will be distributed at the beginning of each class period.

Course readings:  Rachel Adams and David Savran, eds., The Masculinity Studies Reader
                              History 309I course reader
      Students are expected to have read relevant course materials before class on the dates indicated on syllabus.

Schedule of Topics and Readings
Week

1                 August 30                  Introduction.  Organization of “learning circles”
                   September 1              Contemporary views of manhood and masculinity: What makes a “man”?

2                 September 6              Labor Day.  No class.
                   September 8              Theoretical perspectives: creating gender roles
                       Readings:      Adams and Savran, Masculinity Studies Reader, read: 1-40, skim, 41-68
                                                Robert Sapolsky, “The Trouble with Testosterone” [R]
                                                Lewis Terman and Catherine Cox Miles, "Sex and Personality: Studies in masculinity and femininity"
                                                    and "Form B: The M-F Test" [R]
                                                Candace West and Don Zimmerman, “Doing Gender,” Gender & Society

3                 September 13          Theoretical perspectives: ideologies of manhood in western thought
                      Readings:     Adams and Savran, read: 99-134, 245-261 (skim: 69-98)
                   September 15          Theoretical perspectives: constructing power
                      Readings:       Sharon R. Bird, “Welcome to the Men’s Club: Homosociality and the Maintenance of Hegemonic Masculinity,”
                                                        Gender & Society

4                 September 20          English Puritanism: Manhood, sexuality and religion
                      Readings:       Richard Baxter, “Directions against flesh-pleasing,”  [R]
                   September 22          Men, gender, and sexuality in colonial America
                      Readings:       “Massachusetts Colony’s Laws on Sexual Offences, 1641-1660" [R]
                                               “Statutes of Virginia: Regulating sex among servants, slaves, & masters” [R]
                                                Kathleen Brown, “‘Changed ... into the fashion of man’: The politics of sexual difference in a
                                                        seventeenth-century Anglo-American Settlement,” Journal of the History of Sexuality (1995)

5                 September 27          Manhood and the family in colonial America
                      Readings:       Cotton Mather, “Duties of Children to their Parents” and  “A Father’s Resolution” [R]
                                               Benjamin Wadsworth, “About the Duties of Husbands and Wives” (1712) [R]
                                               Benj. Franklin, “Advice concerning his friend’s sexual affairs” (1745) [R]
                                               Frances Hutcheson, “Remarks upon the Fable of the Bees” (1750) [R]
                                               Benj. Franklin, Autobiography (Part 1: “Letter to ‘Dear Son’”) (1771) [R]
                 September 29          Race and Manhood in the French and Indian War
                      Readings:       Samuel Davies, “The Curse of Cowardice” (1758) [R]

6               October 4              Revolution and republican manhood
                     Readings:       Adams and Savran, 135-152
                                              Judith Sargent Murray, “On the Equality of the Sexes” (1790) [R]
                                             Alexis deTocqueville, “On the Social Conditions of the Anglo-Americans,” Democracy in America [R]
                                             Mark Cann, “Manhood, Immortality, and Politics during the American Founding,” Journal of Men’s Studies (1996)
                 October 6              Gender roles and challenges to the Early Nation
                      Readings:       William A. Alcott, A Young Man’s Guide, “selections: chapter 1,” (1836) [R]
                                              Edgar Allen Poe, “The Black Cat” (1843) [R]
                                              Elliott J. Gorn, “‘Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch’: The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern
                                                       Backcountry,” American Historical Review (1985)

7             October 11              “Untethered Men”: Manhood and the California Gold Rush
                     Readings:        Bret Harte, “The Luck of Roaring Camp” {R]
                                                 Col. Albert S. Evans, “A Cruise on the Barbary Coast,” Sketches... [R]

                October 13                            Midterm Exam  – Bring blue book

8             October 18                  Slavery and black manhood
                      Readings:       Josiah Henson, Uncle Tom’s Story of His Life – selections (1877) [R]
                                             W. H. Pennington, The Fugitive Blacksmith – selections (1849) [R]
                                             Diane Sommerville, “The Rape Myth in the Old South Reconsidered,” Journal of Southern History (1995)
                                             Longfellow, Poems on Slavery (2 poems) [R]
                 October 20              19th -Century medical and scientific creations of male sexual deviance
                      Readings:       Adams and Savran, 375-388
                                               Edward R. Jarvis, MD., “On the Comparative Liability of Males and Females to Insanity,”
                                                            Journal of Insanity (1850) [R]
                                              Arthur F. Saint-Aubin, “A Grammar of Black Masculinity: A Body of Science,” Journal of Men’s Studies (2002)

9                 October 25              A Crisis of Manhood: The Civil War
                      Readings:       Frederick Douglass, “Why a Colored Man Should Enlist” (1863) [R]
                                                 Collection of Civil War courtship letters, 1861-1863 [R]
                                                 Stephen Crane, two poems [R]
                                                 Walt Whitman, “Ashes of Soldiers” and “O Captain, My Captain” [R]
                   October 27              Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the restoration of white manhood
                      Readings:       Kevin Hardwick, “‘Your Old Father Abe Lincoln is Dead and Damned’: Black Soldiers and the Memphis
                                                        Race Riot of 1866,” Journal of Social History
                                                   In-class activity: Analyzing white manhood in Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation

10             November 1          Learning values of middle-class manhood in Gilded Age & Victorian America
                      Readings:     Six stories of becoming men in The McGuffey Readers [R]
                                           Mark Twain, “Story of the Good Little Boy,” “Story of the Little Bad Boy” [R]
                                           “What Scouting Means,” The Boy Scout Handbook (1911) [R]
                                           E. Anthony Rotundo, “Body and Soul: Changing Ideals of American Middle-Class Manhood,” Journal of
                                                        Social History (1983)
                 November 3          Industrializing America: gender and class reformation
                      Readings:     Walt Whitman, “I Sing the Body Electric,” Children of Adam [R]
                                             Carl Sandburg, “Chicago” and “The Shovel Man,” Chicago Poems [R]
                                            Theodore Roosevelt, “The Strenuous Life” (1899) [R]
                                            Jack London, “Hoboes that Pass in the Night,” The Road (1907) [R]
                                            Elaine Parsons, “Risky Business: The Uncertain Boundaries of Manhood in the Midwestern Saloon,” Journal of
                                                        Social History (2000)

11             November 8         Contested cultures of manhood in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
                      Readings:       Adams and Savran, 151-174
                                               Jack London, “The Faith of Men” (1914) [R]
                                               Carl Sandburg, “Killers,” War Poems (1915) [R]
                                              News of police raids on burlesque shows, The New York Times [R]
                                               Four articles on male gender roles, Esquire (1930s) [R]
                                             Kevin Mumford, “‘Lost Manhood Found’: Male Sexual Impotence and Victorian Culture in the United
                                                    States,” Journal of the History of Sexuality (1992)
                 November 10        Men and Emotions in modern America
                      Readings:       Peter Stearns, “Men and Romantic Love: Pinpointing a 20th century change,” Journal of Social History (1993)

12             November 15          Work, the Great Depression and “rough” manhood
                      Readings:       Four letters on unemployment [R]
                                               F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Babylon Revisited” (1935) [R]
                                               Richard Wright, “The Man Who Was Almost a Man,” Harper’s (1940) [R]
                                              Steve Meyer, “Work, Play and Power: Masculine Culture on the Automotive Shop Floor, 1930-1960,”
                                                        Men and Masculinities (1999)

                 November 17              World War II and changing gender identities and roles
                      Readings:       Agnes Meyer, Journey Through Chaos – selections [R]
                                               J. B. Martin, “Anything Bothering You Soldier?” Harper’s (1948) [R]
                                               G. G. MacKenzie, “War and the Family,” Journal of Marriage and Family Living (1949) [R]
                                              Erik Erikson, Ego and Gender Identities – selections [R]
                                              Patricia Vettel-Becker, “Destruction and Delight: World War II Combat Photography and the Aesthetic
                                                            Inscription of Masculine Identity,” Men and Masculinities (2002)
                                                  Activity:     View The Best Years of Our Lives before class

13             November 22           Cold War Masculinities
                      Readings:      Adams and Savran, 175-187, 201-225
                                              Alfred Kinsey, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, selections (1948) [R]
                                              Allen Ginsburg, Howl! [R]
                                               D. P. Moynihan, “The Tangle of Pathology” – selections (1965) [R]

                 November 24           The Vietnam Generation
                      Readings:       Letters on fathers, sons, and patriotism, Dear America [R]
                                               Robert Lipton, “What Are We Doing to Ourselves?” Winter Soldier Investigation (1971) [R]
                                               Tracy Karner, “Medicalizing Masculinity,” Masculinities (1995)
                                                Josh Freeman, “Hardhats,” Journal of Social History (1993)

14             November 29              Post-Vietnam Masculinities in Film
                      Readings:      Adams and Savran, 262-273
                                                          Activity:       View (in learning circle) one of the following feature films:
                                                                                    Deliverance
                                                                                    Taxi Driver
                                                                                    Born on the Fourth of July
                                                                                    Full Metal Jacket
                 December 1              The politics of gender, family, equality and the “Men’s Movement”
                      Readings:        Phyllis Schafly, “What the Equal Rights Amendment Means” (1972) [R]
                                                 William R. Pierce, “White Men Unite!” (1978) [R]
                                                R. F. Doyle, “A Manifesto of Men’s Liberation” (1983) [R]
                                               Robert Bly, “I Came out of the Mother Naked” [R]
                                               Robert Bly, “On Male Violence” [R]
                                               Charles Bukowski, 4 poems on men [R]
                                               Theodore Cohen, “Remaking Men,” Journal of Family Issues (1987)
                                               Tom McVey, "The Million Man March," M.E.N. Magazine (1995)

15               December 6              The borders of gender
                      Readings:       Adams and Savran, 355-374, skim: 387-409
                                             Candace West and Sarah Fenstermaker, “Doing Difference,” Gender and Society (1995)
                                             Betsy Lucal, “What It Means to Be Gendered Me: Life on the Boundaries of a Dichotomous Gender System,”
                                                        Gender and Society (1999)
                   December 8              Sexual Violence/Sexual Harassment and the American Man in the 1990s
                        Readings:       Scott Strauss, “Escape From Animal House: Frat Boy Tells All,” On the Issues (1996) [R]
                                                 Supreme Court of the United States, “Joseph Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore  Services,” Opinion of
                                                            the Court, No. 96-568 (1998) [R]

Students are responsible for adhering to all University deadlines re: add/drop/withdrawls.  Deadlines may be found in the CSULB Schedule of Classes – Fall 2004.