Back in January I wrote about anti-male prejudice at the University of Wyoming here and mentioned the birth of a new “male positive” discipline called Male Studies. An organizing webinar in April has led to a full Male Studies conference in New York next October 1-2. As the conference description makes clear, “This is not a gender studies conference. It is not a men's studies conference in the generally accepted sense.” That is, the conference will attempt to investigate, understand, and describe male experience rather than mock, condemn, even erase masculinity, manhood, and manliness. How refreshing! Anti-male prejudice and stereotyping permeate academia. I have described my own experience here and here.
One of the funniest sequences in Evan Coyne Maloney’s documentary film Indoctrinate U is when he wanders from campus to campus asking for directions to “the Men’s Center.” If Male Studies takes hold, maybe someday Evan might actually be able to find one.
Here are the details and the call for papers from the convener, Dr. Miles Groth of Wagner College
“Wagner College will host the first annual Conference on Male Studies, on Friday and Saturday, October 1-2, 2010. Six themes representing several disciplines will be addressed by panels and individual presenters:
- The deep biology of the experience of being male (genetics, biology, psychoneuroendocrinology, paleoanthropology); ▪ Literacy and education of boys and college males (pedagogy, sociology);
- Socioeconomic factors leading to males' over-involvement in the criminal justice system, underemployment and limited opportunities as fathers, resulting from changes in child custody law (economics, forensics, law, public policy);
- Misandric representations of boys and mature males in the media and advertising (media studies including cinema, television and internet, and advertising); ▪ Accounts of the experience of being male (history, literature, autobiography);
Pressing issues related to the emotional well-being of boys and older males, most notably depression and suicide (clinical psychology, medicine and psychiatry, social work).
Specialists in all of the above disciplines as well as related areas of research will present position papers or engage in carefully organized panel discussions of the themes. We expect participants to include scholars from more than the 12 countries who participated along with you in the April 7, 2010 inaugural teleconference and webinar broadcast.
Proceedings of the conference will be published in the first issue of a new journal, Male Studies, in 2011.”
