MA in Liberal Arts

This Subject Includes

• Course No: HS 238
• Course: MA in Liberal Arts
• Semester: VIII
• Title: Masculinities in Literature and Popular Culture
• Stream: English

• Preamble: The aim of this module is to examine the complexities involved in the way „masculinity‟ is represented in literature, society and popular culture. Through a study of selected texts, the module will offer an understanding of the stereotypes and strategies informing notions about commonly conceived gender roles. It will investigate the expectations and anxieties involved in embodying and enacting pre-assigned masculine roles and how such anxieties may manifest in comic as well as crisis-ridden situations. Drawing on selected texts and critical theorists, this module will offer an understanding of how notions of „gendered‟ masculine behavior inform social identities and embodied activities.

  Course contents: Understanding gender as critical theory and embodied practice: readings from some key theorists of gender; Understanding masculinity: biological and ideological attributes; Masculinity and performativity; The economy of expectations informing notions of „manliness‟, „effeminacy‟ and „femininity‟; Anxieties and comic crises in masculinity; Representations of masculinity in texts and contemporary consumer cultures.

  Texts:

  1.R.Kipling, Kim. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics, 1993.

  2.G.Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant”, in Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays. London: Penguin, 2003.

  3.M.Premchand, “The Chess Players”, in The Best of Premchand. New Delhi: Cosmo Publications, 1997.

  4.W.Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Or What You Will. Ed. Roger Warren and Stanley Wells. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

  References:

  1.M.Berger et al. (Eds.), Constructing Masculinity,Routledge, London and New York,1995.

  2.J.Butler, Gender Trouble,New York: Routledge, 1990.

  3.P.Gopinath, Scarecrows of Chivalry: English Masculinities after Empire,University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville,2013.

  4.M.Holmes, What is Gender? Sociological Approaches,Sage Publications,London,2007.

  5.M.Sinha, Colonial Masculinity,Manchester University Press, Manchester,1995.