Myth, Manhood, and Curriculum

This book explores the historicized complexities of myths of manhood through a curriculum study that examines the historical emergence of the current propagandization of attacks on manhood in US public life.

Narratives about manhood and masculinity are often predicated on concepts of violence, such as the “war on men/boys,” which posits a “demasculization” of men that threatens the global white nation. In this book, Burns connects the current moral panic about manhood to a pattern of ethnonationalist and Christian nationalist ideas that pervade culture and contribute to homophobia, attacks on women’s reproductive rights, restrictions on academic freedom, free speech, and school curricula, and which were grafted onto pre-existing fears targeted against communists, socialists, and dissent. A central tenet of the curriculum studies field holds that reactivation of the past can help us to better understand the problems of the present. As such, this study connects contemporary revanchist hysteria about the need to rehabilitate manhood to similar religious, political, economic, militarist, racial, gendered, and sexualized mythologies of manhood deeply embedded in the history of the US. It also speculates on some possibilities for transcending the historicized mythologies of manhood through ethical and aesthetic engagement in the search for truth, self-cultivation, and reparation.

This interdisciplinary and highly original volume will appeal to scholars, faculty, and post-graduate students in curriculum studies, teacher education, gender and sexuality studies, history, and religious studies.