Men teaching ‘Feminism’

Men's roles within the feminist movement will be debated by an expert from Edge Hill University at an international conference.

Dr Ben Brabon, Senior Lecturer in English Literature and SOLSTICE Teaching Fellow, will deliver a keynote workshop sponsored by the HEA's English Subject Centre at the two-day event on Feminism and Teaching on 8^th and 9th April.

He will explore the relationships between men and feminism in his session entitledComplicity and Critique: Postfeminist Pedagogies and Masculinity Studies, looking at the difficulties and pitfalls of teaching modules that examine masculinity in literature and films that often represent horrific acts of violence directed towards women.

Drawing upon his experience of teaching two modules that involve situating men and masculinity within feminism, his workshop will reconsider men's position and roles within the feminist movement and problematise postfeminism's potential to generate a male feminist perspective.

Dr Brabon explained: "In a postfeminist era, men's and masculinity's relationship with feminism has been troubled - not least because at times an inverse logic is applied by critics, whereby men are represented as oppressed simply because they are men. This levelling of the field of power, combined with the continued invocation of sexist and essentialist ideas within the general media and popular press - albeit often with a sense of postmodern irony - further complicates men's affiliation with a contemporary feminist discourse."

Examining both teaching approaches and student responses to texts that focus on unstable and violent (hegemonic) masculinities - such as American Psycho and Fight Club - the workshop will interrogate the role of the lecturer and the student as agents of both complicity and critique. His workshop will consider how we might begin to deploy ‘postfeminist pedagogies' and how an element of complicity in the continuation of male dominance might lead to its collapse.

Developing out of his research for his recent book publication Postfeminism: Cultural Texts and Theories, the workshop is part of a broader critical debate on making dominant masculinity visible in order to erode its power, and also feeds into Dr Brabon's current work for a monograph on The Spectral Phallus: A Cultural History of the Postfeminist Man.

The conference takes place at the University of Nottingham and Dr Brabon will join a number of other high profile speakers including Professor Gina Wisker (University of Brighton), Professor Sara Mills (Sheffield Hallam University), Dr. Louise Mullany (University of Nottingham) and the performance artist Annette Foster. For more information, contact feminismandteaching@nottingham.ac.uk