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Are You a Man or a Mouse? Masculinity Studies in the 20th and 21st Centuries
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“Are you a Man or a Mouse?” offers a critical survey of where Masculinity Studies are after roughly forty years since their inception. It examines the concept of masculinity itself, and interrogates the almost mythological notion of masculinity in perpetual crisis. Drawing on psychoanalytical as well as on deconstructive, narratological, intersectional and comparative approaches, the presentation discusses how these frameworks contribute to a better understanding of masculinity, i.e. what ‘they allow us to conceive’ but also what ‘they hinder us from conceiving.’
Stefan Horlacher is the Chair of English Literature at Dresden University of Technology, Germany. He held guest professorships in India, Sri Lanka, Poland, Italy, Malta and the US. His publications comprise his prize-winning Conceptions of Masculinity in the Works of Thomas Hardy and D.H. Lawrence (2006, in German), Taboo and Transgression in British Literature (2010), Configuring Masculinity in Theory and Literary Practice (2015), Transgender and Intersex: Theoretical, Practical, and Artistic Perspectives (2016; revised and expanded edition 2026), Masculinities: An International Handbook (2016, in German), Contemporary Masculinities in the UK and the US (2017), GenderGraduateProjects V – Women’s Movements, Queerness/Intersex, Feminist Pornography (2021, in German) and Contemporary Sri Lankan Literature and Art: The Creation of a New Community in the Aftermath of War (2026).