Masculinities in Women’s Studies: Locations and Dislocations

We are looking for chapter proposals for a book on Masculinities in Women’s Studies: Locations and Dislocations. We are in the planning stages of what we think is a very exciting project organized around three lines of inquiry and exploration: first, the presence/absence of male-bodied people in academic women’s studies (both students and teachers); second, the ways in which men and masculinities figure into women’s studies classes and curriculum; third, the many ways that men and masculinities are located and dislocated under the analytical and theoretical gaze of women’s studies (and all the other names currently being used for like programs). We are very interested in student perspectives: if you know a graduate or undergraduate student with solid writing skills, please forward this CFP and urge them to submit an abstract. The first stage of the project will consist of a special issue of Men and Masculinities; this will be subsequently expanded as an edited anthology with an academic press.

Possible topics might include:

*the experiences and perspectives of male-bodied professors/students (whether or not they identify as ‘men’) in women’s studies programs and departments. How do men negotiate their complicated subject/identity positions in a discipline that is still often thought of as properly engaged with ‘women’s issues’?

*what are the experiences of male students in the women studies classroom or curriculum? How do they explain their interests to themselves and their peers? How do they experience changes in their attitude toward themselves as men through engagement with the curriculum?

*the various contexts, situational productions, and relative salience of masculinity or male gender experienced by faculty and students as they move in and out of women’s studies spaces, classrooms, meetings, etc.

*the current presence of ‘men’ as a concept, theory, or foil in women’s studies writings, curricula, spaces, etc.

*connections and tensions between men’s non-violence/rape and battery prevention work and women’s studies faculty, programs, and scholarship

*questions about names, institutions and proper objects of study: men's studies, women's studies, gender studies?

Deadlines:

-abstracts/proposals: by 1 May 2009
-drafts of essays: 30 August 2009
-final essays: 31 December 2009

Please send all proposal abstracts (200-300 words) and inquiries to BOTH John Landreau AND Michael Murphy, co-editors.

John Landreau, Women’s and Gender Studies, The College of New Jersey, landreau@tcnj.edu

Michael Murphy, Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Washington University in Saint Louis, mjmurphy@wustl.edu