WINNIPEG, MB – The University of Winnipeg is presenting students a unique learning opportunity by offering its first Men’s Studies course. The University is encouraging students to be part of history, watch films and learn about masculinity in a condensed full course taught in the Winter term of 2010. The course details are:
Boys, Men, and Popular Culture: Filmed Genders
WGS-2258/6, second year course, no prerequisites
Mondays and Wednesdays, 2:30-5:15, 3M62
Men’s studies emerged as early as the 1970s, in dialogue with both women’s studies and the men’s rights movement. Recognizing that women’s studies hadn’t engaged with the gendered construction of masculinity, and that the men’s rights movement failed to recognize masculinity’s complex relation to power, men’s studies came forth to fill the gap.
“When Women’s Studies became Women’s and Gender Studies several years ago, we incorporated perspectives from men’s studies into our courses, but this is the first time we have devoted a course specifically to the area,” said Professor Pauline Greenhill, who is teaching the course.
This course examines myths, theories, and images of boys and men that shape how they are represented and how they represent themselves in popular culture, particularly in feature films. Using feminist, queer, trans, and cultural studies theory, as well as men’s studies perspectives, we will look at how political and material conditions influence representation, and vice versa. We will focus on North American masculinities, examining gender, race, class, age, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity, ability and other categories of identity.
Greenhill and guest lecturers from across the University including Peace and Conflict Studies, Economics, and Criminal Justice Studies, as well as experts from the community, will look at westerns, comedies, action, science fiction and other genres. Topics addressed will include work, relationships, boyhood and violence.
