Abstract

Recent concern about the education of boys and men is certainly justified. Masculinities; those various, sometimes competitive, masculine identities; are often misrepresented in American culture leaving many boys and men feeling alienated and excluded from their learning and living communities. A new acute attentiveness to discourses about boys, men, and masculinities and how they are inscribed without question in our culture is timely and auspicious. Teaching a male-positive literature class can intervene in and contribute positively to the education of boys and men by enabling them to become embodied literate learners and leaders, to become men in literature. Sustaining this male-positive strategy of acute attentiveness and positive intervention, my research answers four interrelated questions: Are American boys and men poorly served by education? What opportunities for undertaking a male-positive approach to education and literacy are evident in current scholarship? How successful was my Men in Literature course in enabling male literacy? What male-positive strategies might better enable men in literature and literacy?