Heritage Lecture Series
Juergen Martschukat
Men in Gray Flannel Suits:
Gender, Families and Social Order in America after World War II
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
SSU Stevenson Hall 1002 at 12:00 p.m.
Admission is Free
Dr. Martschukat will discuss the cultural conflict between the two dominant masculine stereotypes of "father" and "explorer," and will elaborate on its implications, and also refer to 1950s and 1960s strategies for its solution. Men in Gray Flannel Suits begins with exploring the family focus in American postwar society and showing how fatherhood was shaped as predominant masculine identity and hegemonic gender concept in 1950s America. However, family life in suburbia and monogamous matrimony soon appeared to restrict seemingly "essential" male physical and mental energies. Contemporary critics diagnosed a "crisis of masculinity" which was understood as sign of a deep crisis and a lack of energy troubling America at large. The ambivalences of the father figure were embodied by "The man in the gray flannel suit," the main character of a mid-fifties novel and movie.
Juergen Martschukat is Professor of History at Erfurt University in Germany. His research focuses on North American culture, specifically on the history of violence and on gender studies. Among his publications is an introductory book on the history of masculinities, and he is currently working on a book project on fatherhood in America from the revolution to the late twentieth century.
For more information on this event email ccgs@sonoma.edu or call 707-664-2710.
Sponsored by the Center for Culture, Gender & Sexuality Heritage Lecture, History Department, School of Social Sciences, Women's and Gender Studies, Instructionally Related Activities and the Sonoma Student Union Corporation.
