Suchergebnisse

White men still hold most of the political and economic cards in the United States; yet stories about wounded and traumatized men dominate popular culture. Why are white men jumping on the victim bandwagon? Examining novels by Philip Roth, John Updike, James Dickey, John Irving, and Pat Conroy and such films as Deliverance, Misery, and Dead Poets Society--as well as other writings, including The Closing of the American Mind--Sally Robinson argues that white men are tempted by the possibilities of pain and the surprisingly pleasurable tensions that come from living in crisis

On looking -- Scottsboro, the Communist party, and the NAACP: conflicts and desires -- The antilynching exhibitions of 1935: strategies and constraints -- Race, sex, and politics in prewar America: picturing Black oppression -- Mass media, World War II, and the Cold War: the lynching of George Dorsey and Emmitt Till -- The evolution of lynching narratives in contemporary art

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Believing Is Seeing -- 1. Complex Oedipus: Reading Sophocles, Testing Freud -- 2. Missing Links -- 3. The Fair Sex: It's Not What You Think -- 4. In Defense of the Phallus -- 5. White Men Aren't -- Afterword -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index

From antebellum readers avidly consuming stories featuring white southern men as benevolent patriarchs, hell-raising frontiersmen, and callous plantation owners to post-Civil War southern writers seeking to advance a model of southern manhood and male authority as honorable, dignified, and admirable, the idea of a distinctly southern masculinity has reflected the broad regional differences between North and South. In the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond, the media have helped to shape modern models of white manhood, not only for southerners but for the rest of the nation and the world. In White Masculinity in the Recent South, thirteen scholars of history, literature, film, and environmental studies examine modern white masculinity, including such stereotypes as the good old boy, the redneck, and the southern gentleman. With topics ranging from southern Protestant churches to the music of Lynyrd Skynyrd, this cutting-edge volume seeks to do what no other single work has done: to explore the ways in which white southern manhood has been experienced and represented since World War II. Using a variety of approaches-cultural and social history, close readings of literature and music, interviews, and personal stories-the contributors explore some of the ways in which white men have acted in response to their own and their culture's conceptions of white manhood. Topics include neo-Confederates, the novels of William Faulkner, gay southern men, football coaching, deer hunting, church camps, college fraternities, and white men's responses to the civil rights movement. Taken together, these engaging pieces show how white southern men are shaped by regional as well as broader American ideas of what they ought to do and be. White men themselves, the contributors explain, view the idea of southern manhood in two seemingly contradictory ways-as

The complex social production of white racial identity is the focus of this article. Drawing from a larger interview study conducted in a rural white community in the Midwest, I explore how Frank, a high school teacher, experienced being white. I pay particular attention to Frank's descriptions of two white spaces in which he said he participated: one that he called a "basement culture," characterized by laughter and racist and sexist humor, and another that he described as more formal and "politically-correct." Ralph Ellison thought that white racial identity was created in various scapegoating rituals, such as lynching and racist humor. With Ellison's help, I interpret a long comic story that Frank told about selling his van to Mexican immigrants, in which Frank was the butt of the joke, as an example of a scapegoating ritual that just might be compatible with a democratic project.

In this essay the author discusses a new play by Canadian playwright Sharon Pollock called Kabloona Talk (2007). The historical context for this contemporary play is the 1914 murders of two Roman Catholic Missionary priests by two Inuit in the Canadian Arctic, followed by two sensational trials held in southern Canada in 1917. Several attempts have been made by writers and scholars to represent what happened and why, but Pollock's play offers a fascinating look at the political manoeuvring that took place behind the scenes as the white lawyers struggled with the conflict between the dictates of European law and the principles guiding the behaviour of a remote group of Inuit about whom white southern Canadians knew next to nothing. Rather than focus on either the murders or the trials, Pollock uses this actual event to explore the timeless issues of justice, and cultural encounter and misunderstanding.

I've avoided post-mortems on the US election disaster for two reasons. First, they are useless as a guide to the future. The next US election, if there is one [1], will be a referendum on the Trump regime. Campaign strategies that might have gained the Democrats a few percentage points in November 2024 won't be […]