Specialised Themes
Thèmes Spécialisés

11. Masculinity as practice and representation
11. La masculinité: réalités et représentations

Monday, 7 August, 9:00-12:00
Lundi 7 Août de 9h à 12h

Building A, Auditorium 3

Organizer:
Karen Hagemann, Germany

Co-Organizer:
Stefan Dudink, Netherlands

INTRODUCTION AND ABSTRACTS

Discussants:
John Horne, Ireland
John Tosh, United Kingdom

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Introduction:
The central aim of this theme is to demonstrate the potential of the history of masculinity to transform so called general history.

Our main focus will be on masculinity as practice and representation in the history of politics, the military and war in the long 19th century and the 20th century. In this period, modern notions of masculinity and of gender differences in general were being constructed and consolidated, while at the same time modern ideas and practices of war and politics, were being developed and implemented.

Our objective is to analyse the intersection of these two developments by asking how modernisation in these areas was connected to the development of modern notions of gender difference, how it reflected and shaped emerging notions of masculinity, and how these notions produced gender conceptions of and practices in politics and war. We place the history of masculinity within gender history, i.e., the history of socially and culturally constructed notions of sexual difference, which not only referred to men and women but also helped to create gender meanings for social and political life more generallyt and were central importance to the signification and articulation of power relationships. Beyond the above mentioned central aim, we also wish to consider the challenges the history of masculinity poses to current research and theoretical assumptions in gender history, which have heretofore largely addressed the categories of women and femininty. We would like to ask how a history of masculinity might contribute to historicizing the terms of gender difference, and to what extent this necessiates a reconsideration of the currents tenets of gender history.

Papers:

• Caroll Smith-Rosenberg, USA
  The Republican Gentleman: Ideological Conflict/Subjective Uncertainty in the Anglo-American Past
• Stefan Dudink, the Netherlands
  Manly Moderation: Masculinity and the Invention of a Dutch Political Tradition
• Thomas Welskopp, Germany
  Defining Masculinity Politically: The Construction of Masculinity in German Social Democracy, 1848-1878
• Marilyn Lake, Australia
  The Masculinity of Political Discourse: The Representation of 'Needs' as 'Rights' in the Forging of the Australian Welfare State
• Jacobus A. Du Pisani, South Africa
  Mythmaking and Hegemonic Masculinity in Afrikaner Nationalist Mobilisation, 1934-1948
• Sonya O. Rose, USA
  Temperate Heroes: Masculinity in Second World War Britain
• Michael Roper, United Kingdom
  Re-Remembering the Soldier Hero: The Composure and Re-Composure of Masculinity in Narratives of the Great War

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