On the art of manliness

Manliness or masculinity -- especially in the Middle East -- remains understudied. Masculinity is fluid and hence difficult to describe and comprehend. Few have inquired into how men groom themselves, feel about being single, getting old, sick, bald or overweight. What is the relationship between embodiment and masculinity? How do men negotiate different social expectations that aim to define their bodies and masculine selves? What do men and women think constitutes “a real men”? Our focus in this course will be on performance, identity and representation of manliness.

The course invites us to engage the male body as a social product and a producer of social life. Before turning our attention to manliness as represented in Egyptian cinema by the “m3allim”, the “defeated male” and the “new man”; described in literature on the “si al-sayed”, notably in Mahfouz’ trilogy; and enacted in the context of urban Egypt as captured by Farha Ghannam’ ethnography “Live and Die Like a Man”, we’ll review attempts to theorize masculinity, that is, learn about key themes and new directions in studying emergent masculinities. We’ll discuss the concepts of hegemonic and feminine masculinity which offer agency to the masculine subject and read about the crisis of masculinity, i.e. discourses of men in crisis. We will compare Egypt’s very own “ibn al-balad” to Latin America’s “macho” and probe how masculinity relates to women, Islam and health.

What to expect

You will produce a small ethnography of a “masculine or male-dominated space or performance”, such as a barber shop, gym, bar or sports field, or alternatively a theoretically-informed film review or more philosophical essay raising deeper questions around the notion of manliness.

Half way through the course a methodology workshop will introduce you to the mezzanine level where anthropology, philosophy, and art meet.

Why apply

To learn why scholars have argued for a crisis of masculinity

To probe the relationship between embodiment and manliness

To develop a sense of existing male types and emergent masculinities