Flesh in the Word: Billy Budd, Sailor, Compulsory Homosociality, and the Uses of Queer Desire

March 1, 2003

[1] Providing the meaning to Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor, has become an initiation rite in theory and criticism culture. The meaning of Billy Budd usually comes in the form of the position which the critic takes on the novella’s presumably central moral question: the Case either For or Against...

Curing Boys Don’t Cry: Brandon Teena’s Stories

Feb. 1, 2003

“I try to laugh about it cover it all up with lies I try and laugh about it hiding the tears in my eyes cause boys don’t cry boys don’t cry” – The Cure “Boys Don’t Cry,” Boys Don’t Cry 1980 “True to form, Dagger sulked, maintained his distance, and...

‘Oi. Dancing Boy!’ Masculinity, Sexuality, and Youth in Billy Elliot

Jan. 15, 2003

[1] A striking thing seems to be happening in contemporary male dance films. In the 1990s and into the new millennium, men suffering from masculinity crises often engage with dance in order to once again make a credible claim to their masculinity. So pervasive is this trend in films like...

Refashioning Masculine Identity: Jo-Anne Berelowitz interviews Martin Berger about his book, Man Made: Thomas Eakins and the Construction of Gilded Age Manhood.

Jan. 2, 2003

[1] BERELOWITZ: You make the argument that Eakins’s paintings are an attempt to negotiate – indeed, to refashion – Gilded Age conceptions of masculinity. Could you set out for us what was the dominant understanding of masculinity when Eakins was embarking on his career in the 1870s and what shift...

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