ENGL 155 Men, Manhood, and Culture
This course takes as its subject representations of "masculine" behavior in contemporary American popular culture, with feature films,documentaries, fiction, and essays constituting course content. The works of writers such as Ernest Hemingway, James Thurber, Margaret Talbot,Judith Butler, and Norah Vincent, and films such as Tarzan the Ape Man (Van Dyke, 1932), Shane (Stevens, 1953), On the Waterfront (Kazan, 1954), The Graduate (Nichols, 1967),Do the Right Thing (Lee 1989), Reservoir Dogs (Tarantino,1992), and Fight Club (Fincher, 1999) serve as so many "opportunities"-disguised as cultural artifacts-to examine the myths, models, and modes of masculine behavior that are circulated through American popular culture, establishing common conceptions and constructions of men, their manhood, and the competing masculinities that constitute a contemporary sense of what it means to be "a real man"-or, at least, to act like one. Prerequisite: None