Crisis: Masculinity and an Ethic of Care in American Literature

Ferraro, Thomas J

Torgovnick, Marianna

D'Addario, Michael

2023-06-08T18:25:10Z

2023-06-08T18:25:10Z

2023

English

This dissertation takes three crisis periods that have occurred throughout American history—times of war, times of disease, and times of apocalypse—and examines how such periods simultaneously provoke what can be called “traditional” masculine responses of toughness, independence, and executive action along with an alternative gender expression contemporary sociologists refer to as caring masculinity. Rather than consider caring masculinity a new phenomenon, Crisis: Masculinity and an Ethic of Care in American Literature seeks to establish the extended and underexplored history of manhood’s intersection with relational forms of care as expressed in popular literature. By analyzing literary works spanning from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first century, Crisis argues that such patterns of practice have existed in many forms, across a variety of situation, and for a long time.

https://hdl.handle.net/10161/27750

American literature

Gender studies

Ethics

AIDS Literature

Apocalyptic Literature

Caring Masculinity

Masculinity

War Literature

Crisis: Masculinity and an Ethic of Care in American Literature

Dissertation