JOSEPH GELFER

The next issue of Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality is in the final stages of production; it contains the following articles, and will be online by the end of the month:

Articles

Inspire, Expire: Masculinity, Mortality and Meaning in Tim Winton’s Breath by Roie Thomas

Dandy Discipleship: a Queering of Mark’s Male Disciples by Robert J. Myles

Constructing Masculinity: De Utero Patris (from the Womb of the Father) by Paul Collins

Reviews

Review of Eric Magnuson, Changing Men, Transforming Culture: Inside the Men’s Movement by Nathan Hitchcock

Review of Kenneth J. Doka, and Terry L. Martin, Grieving Beyond Gender: Understanding the Ways Men and Women Mourn by Katharina von Kellenbach

Review of Sven Glawion, Elahe Haschemi Yekani, and Jana Husmann-Kastein (eds.), Erlöser: Figurationen männlicher Hegemonie [Redeemer: Figurations of Male Hegemony], and Susanne Lanwerd and Márcia Elisa Moser (eds.), Frau–Gender–Queer: Gendertheoretische Ansätze in der Religionswissenschaft [Women–Gender–Queer: Gender Theory in Religious Studies] by Björn Krondorfer

Review of Trysh Travis, The Language of the Heart: A Cultural History of the Recovery Movement from Alcoholics Anonymous to Oprah Winfrey by Claire Clark

Review of William Ming Liu, Derek Kenji Iwamoto, and Mark H. Chae (eds.), Culturally Responsive Counseling with Asian American Men by Philip Culbertson

Those of you who enjoy the online experience of  Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality but also hanker after the more sensory nature of the printed book will be happy to hear I have partnered with Gorgias Press to bring you The Best of Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality, available at the back end of 2010.

Book description:

Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality (JMMS) is the only journal dedicated to the exploration of masculinity and religion/spirituality in its many forms. The Best of Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality brings together the finest papers published to date in JMMS, providing insight into its diversity both in terms of discipline and geographical reach.

Table of contents:

01: Introduction, Joseph Gelfer (Monash University)

02: Skin Gods: Circumcising the Built Male Body, Roland Boer (University of Newcastle)

03: A Jesuit Mystic’s Feminine Melancholia: Jean-Joseph Surin (1600-1665), Juan M. Marin (Harvard University)

04: The Performance of Normativity: Mormons and the Construction of an American Masculinity, Elizabeth Ruchti (Carlow University)

05: “He Was Pretty Good in There Today”: Reviving the Macho Christ in Ernest Hemingway’s “Today is Friday” and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, Lisa Tyler (Sinclair Community College)

06: To Love the Orientalist: Masculinity in Leila Aboulela’s The Translator, Brendan Smyth (University of Alberta)

07: Sexually Explicit? Re-reading Revelation’s 144,000 Virgins as a Response to Roman Discourses, Lynn Huber (Elon University)

08: Narratives of Silence: Availability in a Spirituality of Fathering, Neil Pembroke (The University of Queensland)

09: Haredi Male Bodies in the Public Sphere: Negotiating with the Religious Text and Secular Israeli Men, Yohai Hakak (University of Portsmouth)

10: Southern Gospel Sissies: Evangelical Music, Queer Spirituality, and the Plays of Del Shores, Douglas Harrison (Florida Gulf Coast University)

11: Dandy Discipleship: A Queering of Mark’s Male Disciples, Robert J. Myles (The University of Auckland)

The next issue of Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality won’t go online until June; however, here’s a sneak preview of the first two papers:

Dandy Discipleship: A Queering of Mark’s Male Disciples

Robert J. Myles (University of Auckland)

While conventional readings of the Bible unambiguously presume the normativity of heterosexuality and binary categories of gender, this paper challenges such modern assumptions by purposefully and strategically re-reading three Markan discipleship texts “sexually.”  By combining a socio-rhetorical approach with queer and gender criticism as informed primarily by the work of Marcella Althaus-Reid, the re-readings attempt to penetrate through existing homophobic and erotophobic interpretations. Particular attention is also given to the ways in which the gender and sexuality of the male disciples has been constructed and can be problematized in both the world behind the text and the world in front of the text.

Inspire, Expire: Masculinity, Mortality and Meaning in Tim Winton’s Breath

Roie Thomas (Australian Catholic University)

Tim Winton’s latest novel and winner of the Miles Franklin award Breath (2009) is investigated here within a framework of theistic existentialism alongside a critique of masculinities in the Australian context. This novel presents a particular take on hegemonic masculinity and this dovetails neatly, I argue, with a continuum of spiritual consciousness and responsiveness drawn up by Danish creative writer and theological maverick, Søren Kierkegaard.