Mar 29, 2024  
2019-2020 Graduate Catalog 
    
2019-2020 Graduate Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

ENG 6900 Masculinity and Nation


This course looks at literary constructions of nation and gender, particularly texts that, in various ways, construct the nation in terms of masculinity and masculinity in terms of the nation. As an outgrowth of feminism’s challenge to the unproblematic equation of male experience with human experience, masculinity itself has come under new critical scrutiny. At the same time, postcolonial discourse has helped shed light on the construction of the “imagined community” of the nation. The course looks at the role literary texts have played in the interrelated concepts of national identity and masculine identity. The nation and period studied depend on curricular needs and the teacher’s expertise. For example, the course might focus on nineteenth-century Britain, exposing students to influential works rarely assigned in other courses, such as boys’ school stories, and also offering them a new way to view more canonical works. Alternatively, the course might focus on mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century America, and look at the frontier, the New World versus the Old World, African American masculinity, and more. Other possible foci include early-modern England, contemporary America, or nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ireland.
Credits: 3.0