ABSTRACT

Given the substantial impact of feminism on children’s literature and culture during the last quarter century, it comes as no surprise that gender studies have focused predominantly on issues of female representation. The question of how the same patriarchal ideology structured representations of male bodies and behaviors was until very recently a marginal discussion. Now that masculinity has emerges as an overt theme in children’s literature and film, critical consideration of the subject is timely, if not long overdue

Ways of Being Male addresses this new concern in an unprecedented collection of essays examining how contemporary debates about masculinity are reflected in fiction and film for young adults. An outstanding team of scholars elucidates the ways in which different versions of male identity are constructed and presented to young audiences. The contributors, drawn from a variety of academic disciplines, employ international discourses in literary criticism, feminism, social sciences, film theory, psychoanalytic criticism, and queer theory in their wide-ranging exploration of male representation. With its illuminating array of perspectives, this pioneering survey brings a long neglected subject into sharp focus.

chapter 1|14 pages

Making Boys Appear

The Masculinity of Children's Fiction

chapter 2|23 pages

Picturing the Male

Representations of Masculinity in Picture Books

chapter 3|17 pages

“A Page Just Waiting to Be Written On”

Masculinity Schemata and the Dynamics of Subjective Agency in Junior Fiction

chapter 4|23 pages

Redeeming Masculinity at the End of the Second Millennium

Narrative Reconfigurations of Masculinity in Children's Fiction

chapter 5|18 pages

Reframing Masculinity

Female-to Male Cross-Dressing

chapter 6|20 pages

Come Lads and Ladettes

Gendering Bodies and Gendering Behaviors

chapter 7|17 pages

Masculinity as Social Semiotic

Identity Politics and Gender in Disney Animated Films

chapter 8|17 pages

Making the Invisible Visible

Stereotypes of Masculinity in Canonized High School Literature

chapter 10|21 pages

Queering Heterotopic Spaces

Shyam Selvadurai's Funny Boy and Peter Wells's Boy Overboard

chapter 11|15 pages

Trigger Pals

A Case History