FTS - Masculinity

This seminar introduces students to critical thinking and a discussion of values, and develops oral and written communication skills, through an investigation of masculinity in the United States and Latin America. What does it mean to be a man in the United States and in Latin America? How do these perceptions of masculinity from different cultures interact with each other? In this course we will try to answer these questions by analyzing how media shapes our cultural understanding of masculinity, the models of masculinity that become the model for ourselves, and its impact in our perception of what a "happy and successful male" is. We will also analyze how this hegemonic masculinity manifests itself in the way we (both men and women) live our every-day life, question it, and critically engage with it. The purpose of this analysis is to understand how masculine hegemony impacts the division between genders and types of sexuality in our societies; and to envision more inclusive notions of masculinity.

Based on films, works of literature, and journal articles, students hold in-class discussions, present their ideas orally in front of the class, and produce written text where they explore different ways to engage audiences in the topic.

Nick Ray's "Rebel Without a Cause" "Rebel Without a Cause" illustrates the societal pressures to adopt specific types of masculinity in the American bourgeois family. A sense of crisis is deeply gendered in this film.	Chronicle of a Death Foretold García Márquez's "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" is a prime example of a type of patriarchal structure where honor shapes masculinity to a degree that fosters violence and social complicity in said violence.	Hegemonic Masculinity We study the circle that creates and sustains a type of hegemonic masculinity that tends to exclude and police divergent ways in which men live their lives; and that subjects women to a male-based power structure.

mejia CARLOS

Nick Ray's "Rebel Without a Cause"

"Rebel Without a Cause" illustrates the societal pressures to adopt specific types of masculinity in the American bourgeois family. A sense of crisis is deeply gendered in this film.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

García Márquez's "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" is a prime example of a type of patriarchal structure where honor shapes masculinity to a degree that fosters violence and social complicity in said violence.

Hegemonic Masculinity

We study the circle that creates and sustains a type of hegemonic masculinity that tends to exclude and police divergent ways in which men live their lives; and that subjects women to a male-based power structure.