First Published in 1976, Dilemmas of Masculinity takes a rare look at the immediate impact on masculinity of the women's movement. The book is informed by research carried out during 1969-1970, when Mirra Komarovsky was teaching Sociology at Barnard College. It offers a unique insight into the early impact of the women's movement on college-aged men.

In this risk-taking book, a major feminist philosopher engages the work of the actor and director who has progressed from being the stereotypical “man’s man” to pushing the boundaries of the very genres—the Western, the police thriller, the war or boxing movie—most associated with American masculinity. Cornell’s highly appreciative encounter with the films directed by Clint Eastwood revolve around the questions “What is it to be a good man?” and “What is it to be, not just an ethical person, but specifically an ethical man?” Focusing on Eastwood as a director rather than as an actor or cultural icon, she studies Eastwood in relation to major philosophical and ethical themes that have been articulated in her own life’s work. In her fresh and revealing readings of the films, Cornell takes up pressing issues of masculinity as it is caught up in the very definition of ideas of revenge, violence, moral repair, and justice. Eastwood grapples with this involvement of masculinity in and through many of the great symbols of American life, including cowboys, boxing, police dramas, and ultimately war—perhaps the single greatest symbol of what it means (or is supposed to mean) to be a man. Cornell discusses films from across Eastwood’s career, from his directorial debut with Play Misty for Me to Million Dollar Baby. Cornell’s book is not a traditional book of film criticism or a cinematographic biography. Rather, it is a work of social commentary and ethical philosophy. In a world in which we seem to be losing our grip on shared symbols, along with community itself, Eastwood’s films work with the fragmented symbols that remain to us in order to engage masculinity with the most profound moral and ethical issues facing us today.

Traces the history of black men in America using a tough-guy image to obscure their anger and disappointment over their roles in society back to their origins in Africa and the slave era.

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The Before Columbus Foundation 2018 Winner of the AMERICAN BOOK AWARD Tommy J. Curry’s provocative book The Man-Not is a justification for Black Male Studies. He posits that we should conceptualize the Black male as a victim, oppressed by his sex. The Man-Not, therefore,is a corrective of sorts, offering a concept of Black males that could challenge the existing accounts of Black men and boys desiring the power of white men who oppress them that has been proliferated throughout academic research across disciplines. Curry argues that Black men struggle with death and suicide, as well as abuse and rape, and their genred existence deserves study and theorization. This book offers intellectual, historical, sociological, and psychological evidence that the analysis of patriarchy offered by mainstream feminism (including Black feminism) does not yet fully understand the role that homoeroticism, sexual violence, and vulnerability play in the deaths and lives of Black males. Curry challenges how we think of and perceive the conditions that actually affect all Black males.

Women want change: egalitarian sexual relationships, families, and workplaces. But women, like men, also fear change—to achieve it, both men and women will sacrifice what are now thought of as prerogatives. In intimate interviews with eighty women, Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner Judith Levine grapples with the negative stereotypes of men that, in “naming the enemy”—Mama’s Boy, Bumbler, Betrayer, Seducer, Brute, Prick, Killer, and others—both militate for change and self-protectively maintain the status quo. My Enemy, My Love makes clear that gender roles, the social definitions of masculinity and femininity, the culture’s assignment of certain exclusive traits to each biological sex, have imprisoned us on either side of a divide. She writes: “Gender allows a person citizenship in only one country.” This timely investigation of man-hating, misogyny, ambivalence, and accommodation ends with the hope that “When better-than and worse-than give way to different-from, and different-from ceases to be a signal for enmity, categorical hatreds will lose their utility, and we will be disarmed.”

This is an exciting new edition of R.W. Connell's ground-breaking text, which has become a classic work on the nature and construction of masculine identity. Connell argues that there is not one masculinity, but many different masculinities, each associated with different positions of power. In a world gender order that continues to privilege men over women, but also raises difficult issues for men and boys, his account is more pertinent than ever before. In a substantial new introduction and conclusion, Connell discusses the development of masculinity studies in the ten years since the book's initial publication. He explores global gender relations, new theories, and practical uses of mascunlinity research. Looking to the future, his new concluding chapter addresses the politics of masculinities, and the implications of masculinity research for understanding current world issues. Against the backdrop of an increasingly divided world, dominated by neo-conservative politics, Connell's account highlights a series of compelling questions about the future of human society. This second edition of Connell's classic book will be essential reading for students taking courses on masculinities and gender studies, and will be of interest to students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences.