Rivalrous Masculinities: Images of the Male Body over Time
This project puts together an international network of scholars and students based in German departments to provide the opportunity to build strength in linguistic fluency, cross-cultural literacy, and deep historical knowledge. Specifically, a series of undergraduate seminars based at Duke will meet virtually with similar seminars being held at the University of Hamburg, the University of Frankfurt, and the University of Bamberg to curate an exhibition at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, which is tentatively scheduled for the center space of gallery three during the spring semester 2014.
The co-conveners believe that curating an exhibition focusing on the male body is an ideal way to achieve the intellectual goals of teaching undergraduates that masculinity, like femininity, is a social and cultural construction of gender; that constructions of masculinity change over time; and that different forms of masculinity co-exist, often in sharp competition with one another, no less so in the past than today. We believe that students will discover through this learning experience that representations of the body and gender intersect with political, racial, and religious discourses that have changed in salient ways over time. They will also discover that in these images the body has become a site of identity, a place where struggles for power and control play out.
The project is being convened by:
- Ann Marie Rasmussen, Professor, Germanic Languages and Literature
- Steffen Kaupp, graduate student, Carolina Duke Graduate Program in German Studies
- Christian Straubhaar, graduate student, Carolina Duke Graduate Program in German Studies
