School of Undergraduate Studies

Ambedkar University Delhi

Course Outline

Course Code: SHS202806

Title: Masculinities

Type of Course: Gender Studies

Cohort for which it is compulsory: MA Gender Studies, Sem 3

Cohort for which it is elective: All other Masters students

No of Credits: 2

Semester and Year Offered: 3rd Semester (Monsoon Semester 2016)

Course Coordinator and Team: Rachna Chaudhary

Email of course coordinator: [email protected]

Pre-requisites: Graduation in any of the disciplines

Aim:

Masculinity as a field of enquiry is important to theorise gender as a category of analysis. The discourse
of masculinity as a dominant and superior gender position is produced at a number of sites and has
specific consequences for ‘other’ genders especially its perceived antithesis, femininity. This course will
explore various cultural, political and social contexts through which ideas of masculinity / masculinities
circulate and take shape. It is not just the snap shot view of synchronic categories, which can be
imagined as fixed in the contemporary, but also the process view of cateogories, evolving and changing
in time, historically that needs to be there in analysis.

India has seen the rise of studies on masculinities from mid 90s onwards. The course would be a review
of the important studies from India, pitching it firmly within a feminist framework, which means,
analysing power operating in the construction and performances of masculinities.

Brief description of modules/ Main modules:

Module 1: Theorising Masculinity

Module 2: Masculinity and History: Pre-Colonial, Colonial and Post-colonial Contexts

Module 3: Learning to be a Man

- Family

- Schooling

- Religion

- Work

- Caste

Module 4: Masculinity and Sexuality

- Men, Women and Sexuality

- Heterosexuality, Homosexuality and Masculinity

Module 5: Masculinities, ‘Honour’ and Violence

- Losing Masculinity, Maintaining Masculinity

- War and Masculinity

Module 7: Masculinities, Beauty, Physicality and Fitness

- Making-up the Male Body

- Masculinity in Performance

Assessment Details with weights:

Group Assignments

Class will be divided into groups of 3. Each group has to do a small research project around the question
of masculinities involving a very short field visit. No long drawn out ethnography is involved but a short
visit to some site which will allow the student to be trained in basic ethnographic techniques as well as
using cultural analysis to read space and gender.

1. Analysis of Space – written submission (40%)

1. Visit to a mall and a gendered analysis of toys for middle class boys.

2. Clothing and men – ethnography of a working class shopping space.

 3. Public Spaces, Leisure and Masculinities: Observing Men in the Street

4. Sexualities and Masculinities: Cyber Space and Some Dating Sites in India

5. Labour and Masculinities: Life Narratives of Selected Rikshaw Pullers /middle class
shopkeepers around AUD

6. Community (caste and religion) and Masculinities: Any community the researcher belongs
to analyzed in terms of masculinities through life narratives collected of close relatives

7. Any other subject suggested by student groups.

2. Reading Cultural Texts – written submission (40%)

1. Analyze advertisements for men’s products looking at notions of masculinities and class.

2. Look at the Film posters and analyze masculinities in time

3. Presentation –( 20%)

Tentative Reading List:

Alter, J. (1992). Hanuman: Shakti, Bhakti and Brahmacharya. In The Wrestler’s

Body: Identity and Ideology in North India. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and Subversion of Identity. 1990.

Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. 1993.

Bannerjee, S. (2005). ‘Cultural Nationalism, Masculine Hinduism and Contemporary

Hindutva’ in Make me a Man! Masculinity, Hinduism and Nationalism in India. New
York: SUNY Press.
Chopra, R. (2006). ‘Invisible Men: Masculinity, Sexuality and Male Domestic
Labour’, Men and Masculinities, 9 (2): 152-167.
Osella, C.,Chopra, R. and Osella, R. (eds.) South Asian Masculinities. Contexts of
Change, Sites of Continuity. Delhi: Women Unlimited.

Jain, K. (2004). ‘Muscularity and its Ramifications: Mimetic Male Bodies in Indian
Mass Culture’. In Sanjay Srivastava (ed.) Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes. Sexualities,
Masculinities and Culture in South Asia. New Delhi: Sage.
Kandiyoti, D. (1994). ‘The Paradoxes of Masculinity: Some Thoughts on Segregated
Societies’, in Cornwall and Lindisfarne (Ed). Dislocating Masculinity. Comparative
Ethnographies. Abingdon: Routledge.

O’Hanlon, R. (1997). “Issues of Masculinity in North India History.” Indian Journal

of Gender Studies, 4: 1-19.

Rosselli, J. (1980). “The Self-image of effeteness: Physical Education and

Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Bengal.” Past and Present 86: 121-148.
Sen, P. (2005). “Crimes of Honour, Value and Meaning”. In Lynn Welchman and
Sarah Hossain, (eds.) ‘Honour’. Crimes, paradigms, and violence against women.
London: Zed Books.
Nandy, Ashis. 1983. The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under
Colonialism. New York: Oxford University Press.

Sinha, Mrinalini. 1995. Colonial Masculinity: The 'Manly Englishman' and the
‘Effeminate Bengali' in Late Nineteenth Century. Manchester: Manchester University
Press.

Srivastava, Sanjay. 2004a. Introduction: Semen, History, Desire and Theory. In

Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes: Sexualities, Masculinities and Culture in South Asia,
ed. Sanjay Srivastava, 11-48. New Delhi, Thousand Oaks, London: Sage.

Rao, Anupama. “The Sexual Politics of Caste: Violence and the Ritual Archaic.” in
The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India. Ranikhet: Permananet
Black. 2009. pp: 217-240.

Kodoth, Shifting the Ground of Fatherhood: Matriliny, Men and Marriage in Early
Twentieth Century Malabar. Working Paper Series 359. Thiruvananthapuram: Centre
for Development Studies.2003.

Anandhi S. et al. “Work, Caste and Competing Masculinities : Notes from a Tamil
Village.” The Economic and Political Weekly. Oct 26, 2002. pp: 4397-4406.

Ray, Raka. “Culture of Servitude.” Religion and Masculinities

Mehta, Deepak. “Circumcision, Body, Masculinity” in Veena Das et al (eds).

Violence and Subjectivity. Berekely: University of California Press, 2009. pp: 79-
101.

Gupta, Charu. Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims and the Hindu
Public in Colonial India. Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2001.pp: 222-320.
Srinivasan, Deepa. Sculpting the Middle Class: History, Masculinity and the Amar
Chitra Katha.Routeledge, 2010.

Chowdhury,Indira. The Frail Hero and Virile History: Gender and the Politics of
Culture in Colonial. Delhi: OUP, 1994.

Sarkar, Tanika. 2001. Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion and Cultural
Nationalism. New Delhi: Permanent Black. 250-267.

Srivastava, Sanjay (Ed.) Sexual Sites, Seminal Attitudes: Sexualities, Masculinities

and Culture in South Asia. Sage, 2004.

Reddy, Gayatri. With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

Maddox, Georginia. Essay on being a butch female in India. In Nivedita Menon’s

Sexualities.

Goldman, Robert P. (1993), “Transsexualism, Gender, and Anxiety in Traditional

India” In Journal of American Oriental Society. Pp. 374-401.