What do novels such as Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News, Michael Cunningham’s A Home at the End of the World, and Jayne Anne Phillips’ MotherKind have in common with films such as Smoke and Mrs Doubtfire? This study explores the intersection of masculinity and domesticity in contemporary film and literature. It argues that these texts, produced since the 1990s, address with some urgency the notion of “new fatherhood” in the United States. They offer explorations of the idea that American fatherhood around the turn of the twenty-first century is changing, and they problematize the legitimacy of “new fathers” and “alternative families” in a national culture where the “old” patriarch and the nuclear family still often loom large in the imagination of many Americans.

Masculinity in Contemporary New York Fiction is an interdisciplinary study that presents masculinity as a key thematic concern in contemporary New York fiction. This study argues that New York authors do not simply depict masculinity as a social and historical construction but seek to challenge the archetypal ideals of masculinity by writing counter-hegemonic narratives. Gendering canonical New York writers, namely Paul Auster, Bret Easton Ellis, and Don DeLillo, illustrates how explorations of masculinity are tied into the principal themes that have defined the American novel from its very beginning. The themes that feature in this study include the role of the novel in American society; the individual and (urban) society; the journey from innocence to awareness (of masculinity); the archetypal image of the absent and/or patriarchal father; the impact of homosocial relations on the everyday performance of masculinity; male sexuality; and the male individual and globalization. What connects these contemporary New York writers is their employment of the one of the great figures in the history of literature: the flâneur. These authors take the flâneur from the shadows of the Manhattan streets and elevate this figure to the role of self-reflexive agent of male subjectivity through which they write counter-hegemonic narratives of masculinity. This book is an essential reference for those with an interest in gender studies and contemporary American fiction.

This book speaks to the meanings and values that inhere in close relations, focusing on ‘family’ and ‘kinship’ but also looking beyond these categories. Multifaceted, diverse and subject to constant debate, close relations are ubiquitous in human lives on embodied as well as symbolic levels. Closely related to processes of power, legibility and recognition, close relations are surrounded by boundaries that both constrain and enable their practical, symbolical and legal formation. Carefully contextualising close relations in relation to different national contexts, but also in relation to gender, sexuality, race, religion and dis/ability, the volume points to the importance of and variations in how close relations are lived, understood and negotiated. Grounded in a number of academic areas and disciplines, ranging from legal studies, sociology and social work to literary studies and ethnology, this volume also highlights the value of using inter- and multidisciplinary scholarly approaches in research about close relations. Chapter 11 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Focusing on global examples of gender equality, this collection explores non-dominant models of masculinity that represent gender equity in pro-feminist ways. Essays explore new alternative models of masculinity by a wide variety of contemporary authors and texts, ranging from Paul Auster to Jonathan Franzen.

This volume explores which relations produce or maintain masculinities and certain gendered systems of power and the consequences of these gender constructions that further gender research. To understand the meanings of masculinity/masculinities and relationalities as critical concepts in gender studies it takes a wide theoretical grip that spans over several research fields. From a feminist perspective, it critically investigates masculinities as relationally constructed by scrutinizing which relations construct masculinity within a certain gendered system of power, such as the nation, the family, or the workplace, and explores how this is done. ‘In relation to what?’ is hence, in spite of its almost vulgar rhetorical simplicity, an important question in investigating and problematizing gender.

The Routledge International Handbook of Masculinity Studies provides a contemporary critical and scholarly overview of theorizing and research on masculinities as well as emerging ideas and areas of study that are likely to shape research and understanding of gender and men in the future. The forty-eight chapters of the handbook take an interdisciplinary approach to a range of topics on men and masculinities related to identity, sex, sexuality, culture, aesthetics, technology and pressing social issues. The handbook’s transnational lens acknowledges both the localities and global character of masculinity. A clear message in the book is the need for intersectional theorizing in dialogue with feminist, queer and sexuality studies in making sense of men and masculinities. Written in a clear and direct style, the handbook will appeal to students, teachers and researchers in the social sciences and humanities, as well as professionals, practitioners and activists.

Making home explores the figure of the orphan child in a broad selection of contemporary US novels by popular and critically acclaimed authors Barbara Kingsolver, Linda Hogan, Leslie Marmon Silko, Marilynne Robinson, Michael Cunningham, Jonathan Safran Foer, John Irving, Kaye Gibbons, Octavia Butler, Jewelle Gomez and Toni Morrison. The orphan child is a continuous presence in US literature, not only in children’s books and nineteenth-century texts, but also in a variety of genres of contemporary fiction for adults. Making home examines the meanings of this figure in the contexts of American literary history, social history and ideologies of family, race and nation. It argues that contemporary orphan characters function as links to literary history and national mythologies, even as they may also serve to critique the limits of literary history, as well as the limits of familial and national belonging.

This open access book collects the major discussions in divorce research in Europe. It starts with an understanding of divorce trends. Why was divorce increasing so rapidly throughout the US and Europe and do we see signs of a turn? Do cohabitation breakups influence divorce trends or is there a renewed stability on the partner market? In terms of divorce risks, the book contains new insights on Eastern European countries. These post socialist countries have evolved dramatically since the fall of the Wall and at present they show the highest divorce figures in Europe. Also the influence of gender, and more specifically women’s education as a risk in divorce is examined cross nationally. The book also provides explanations for the negative gradient in female education effects on divorce. It devotes three separate parts to new insights in the post-divorce effects of the life course event by among others looking at consequences for adults and children but also taking the larger family network into account. As such the book is of interest to demographers, sociologists, psychologists, family therapists, NGOs, and politicians. “This wide-ranging volume details important trends in divorce in Europe that hold implications for understanding family dissolution causes and consequences throughout the world. Highly recommended for researchers and students everywhere.”

This volume addresses the persistent and frequently toxic associations between masculinity and games. It explores many of the critical issues in contemporary studies of masculinity—including issues of fatherhood, homoeroticism, eSports, fan cultures, and militarism—and their intersections with digital games, the contexts of their play, and the social futures associated with sustained involvement in gaming cultures. Unlike much of the research and public discourse that put the onus of “fixing” games and gaming cultures on those at its margins—women, LGBTQ, and people of color—this volume turns attention to men and masculinities, offering vital and productive avenues for both practical and theoretical intervention.

A climate of Islamophobia allows anxieties about Muslim men living in and migrating to Britain to endure. British Muslims men are often profiled in highly negative terms or regarded with suspicion owing to their perceived religious and cultural heritage. But novels and films by British migrant and diaspora writers and filmmakers powerfully contest these stereotypes, and explore the rich diversity of Muslim masculinities in Britain. This book is the first critical study to engage with British Muslim masculinities in this literary and cinematic output from the perspective of masculinity studies. Through close analysis of work by Monica Ali, Nadeem Aslam, Guy Gunaratne, Sally El Hosaini, Hanif Kureishi, Suhayl Saadi, Kamila Shamsie, Zadie Smith, Zia Haider Rahman and Salman Rushdie, Peter Cherry examines how migrant and diaspora protagonists negotiate their masculinity in a climate of Islamophobic and anti-migrant rhetoric. Cherry proposes a transcultural reading of these novels and films that exposes how conceptions of 'Britishness', 'Muslimness' and those of masculinity are unstable and contingent constructs shaped by migration, interaction with other cultures, and global and local politics.