Men’s Studies

Generally described as the critical analysis of men and masculinities, men’s studies emerged as a legitimate field of academic inquiry in the early 1990s.  Although men’s studies has not yet been widely adopted as a major program at most American colleges and universities, its increasing incorporation and success suggests a growing tendency since the late twentieth century to rethink the meaning of masculinity in the United States.

Like women’s studies, its more widely accepted sister discipline, men’s studies is based on the premise that society views all human beings through a gendered lens, a distortion that has traditionally resulted in the general privileging of men over women.  While recognizing the inequality of this history, contemporary men’s studies also examines aspects of patriarchy not often broached during discussions of gender:  the complex, contradictory and, at times, oppressive, cloak of masculinity men are expected to assume.  Of highest priority within the discipline is the study of men as unique gendered beings, rather than as the paradigm for generic human existence.  As such, men’s studies scholars seek to deconstruct terms such as “mankind,” which imply a homogenous worldview and experience of men and women of varying age, race, and socio-economic status.

Men's studies first emerged during the late 1960s and 1970s as a response, in part, to the second wave of American feminism. Scholarship within the discipline was also influenced by the widespread disillusionment over the Vietnam War, a cynicism that sparked a questioning of patriarchal power structures, traditional male roles, and the male behavioral expectations encouraged by World War II and the Cold War.  Courses focusing on men and masculinities began appearing at some of the nation’s more liberal institutions in the mid-1970s.  The University of California at Berkeley led the way by incorporating the topic into its curriculum in 1976.

Since that time, men’s studies scholarship has gone through two discernable waves.  The first, running roughly from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, was concerned primarily with the lived experience of white, middle-class, men.  Much important scholarship resulted from this first wave, most notably Joseph Pleck’s The Myth of Masculinity (1981) and Peter Filene’s Him/Her/Self:  Sex Roles in Modern America (1986).  The rapid growth of the field was further indicated by the expansion of Eugene August’s 1985 annotated bibiliography Men’s Studies.  Originally including about 600 entries, the book contained over one thousand when it was updated as The New Men’s Studies less than a decade later.  The field's early indebtedness to women's studies and feminist thought was apparent in the theories and observations of Judith Butler, Carol Gilligan, and Barbara Ehrenreich, who produced significant scholarship during this time period.

By the late 1980s, the same rethinking of American masculinity that had produced men's studies had also sparked the emergence of four major men’s movements—the profeminist movement, the Promise Keepers, the men’s rights movement, and the mythopoetics.

Although the academic examination of men and masculinity is most commonly derived from a profeminist perspective, popular men’s studies books tend to focus on the mythopoetic movement and the topics of men’s rights, therefore distorting the public’s perception of the discipline.  For example, mythopoetic men are commonly characterized as New Age fanatics who beat drums and read poetry.  The images from these movements have negatively influenced both popular and academic attitudes toward men’s studies, although they have had little influence on the academic study of men and masculinities.

Despite these often inaccurate characterizations, men’s studies showed signs of evolution and continuing growth during the 1990s.  Several new academic journals and organizations were dedicated specifically to the study of men, including the American Men’s Studies Association (1991), the Journal of Men’s Studies (1992) and Men and Masculinities (1998).  E. Anthony Rotundo's American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (1993), the first published history of American masculinities, became a starting point for future scholarship despite criticisms of its narrow focus on white middle-class men.

The 1990s also witnessed calls for a "newer men's studies" as emerging themes surfaced from the scholarship of Harry Brod, Michael Kimmel, and Kenneth Clatterbaugh.  Academics leading this second wave of inquiry are primarily concerned with masculinity as a plural and dynamic entity, addressing questions of how men of differing races, sexual orientations, and socio-economic standing negotiate the boundaries of their gender.   This second wave of masculinity scholarship is particularly influenced by gay studies and postcolonialism.

Despite its ostensive focus on disenfranchised groups, contemporary masculinity scholarship also examines the existence and cultural repercussions of the “crisis narrative” of the white, heterosexual, American male.  Academics have increasingly recognized that hegemonic masculinity is—and always has been—a dynamic, rather than fixed, construction.  Manhood is typically defined in relation to a socio-economic or cultural “other,” for example, property ownership, nationalism, or paternity.  Ideological shifts in any of these spheres—prompted perhaps, by an economic downturn or an elevated consciousness resulting from racial, gender, or sexual liberation movements—necessitates a corresponding shift in cultural definitions of masculinity. As society changes, so too does the expectations of men, causing masculine ideals to be perpetually “in crisis.”

Uncovering the dynamic nature of manhood further complicated avenues of inquiry previously considered exhausted by most academics, namely the literary and political canon. This shift has led to revived scholarly interest in the personal lives and work of several prominent “dead, white, men.” This academic trend aroused concern that the current path of men’s studies scholarship would reverse the progress that had been made in expanding the academic curriculum to include issues and topics involving women, non-whites, and homosexuals, and that the interests of these groups would again become subordinated to those of white, heterosexual men. The notion that the scholarship of women, men, and homosexuals could best be served under the more general categories of "gender" and "sexuality" rather than in isolated programs such as “women’s” or “queer” studies gained momentum as men’s studies assumed the level of academic discipline in its own right in the early 1990s. As a result, some women's studies programs changed their names to conform to the new rubrics.

While the study of American masculinity is indebted to the academic framework of women’s studies, which created the vocabulary for discussions of gender-based discrimination and social constructs, the interdependence between men's studies and women's studies does not mean that the two disciplines are inextricably linked.  As the scope and breadth of gender studies continues to expand, it becomes increasingly clear that while both men and women are influenced by ever-fluctuating gender dynamics, their experience in these roles is far from uniform.  Although barely a decade old, men’s studies have succeeded in complicating our understanding of the American male.   Similar breakthroughs are likely to develop as this discipline evolves, ensuring a more balanced perception of manhood and gender in general, as well as a deeper understanding of U.S. history.

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