Tracing the roots of toxic masculinity‪.‬ University of Minnesota Press

Masculinity in Transition is a book that moves the study of masculinity away from an overriding preoccupation with cisnormativity, whiteness, and heteronormativity, and toward a wider and more generative range of embodiments, identifications, and ideologies. Author K. Allison Hammer’s bold rethinking of masculinity and its potentially toxic effects lays bare the underlying fragility of normative masculinity. Here, Hammer is joined in conversation with Kale Bantigue Fajardo. This episode was recorded in late fall of 2023.

K. Allison Hammer (they/them) is assistant professor and coordinator of women, gender, and sexuality studies at Southern Illinois University. Hammer is author of Masculinity in Transition.

Kale Bantigue Fajardo (he/him) is associate professor of American studies and Asian American studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Fajardo is author of Filipino Crosscurrents: Oceanographies of Seafaring, Masculinities, and Globalization.
REFERENCES:
The Politics of Friendship / Jacques Derrida
The Feeling of Kinship / David Eng
Men in Place / Miriam J. Abelson
True Sex / Emily Skidmore
Masculinities in Theory / Todd Reeser
Gertrude Stein
Female Masculinity / Jack Halberstam
Sons of the Movement / Bobby Noble
The Future of Whiteness / Linda Martín Alcoff
Disturbing Attachments / Kadji Amin
Emily Dickinson
Willa Cather
Stone Butch Blues / Leslie Feinberg
Minnie Bruce Pratt
Andrea Gibson
Reinaldo Arenas
Marlon Riggs
Presidential masculinity (Reagan, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden)
The Color Pynk / Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley
Nao Bustamante
Judith Butler
The Crying Game (film, 1992)
Disclosure (film, 2020)
Buddhism
Care Work / Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Trans Care / Hil Malatino
Normal Life / Dean Spade
Mutual Aid / Dean Spade
Workers in Industrial America / David Brody
Masculinity in Transition and Filipino Crosscurrents are available from University of Minnesota Press.
MORE: Listen to more talks with K. Allison Hammer on the University of Minnesota Press YouTube page (with Greta Olson and Christopher Breu), the Gender Stories podcast, and on In Conversation with Frank Schaeffer.
"A major intervention into masculinities studies, Masculinity in Transition brilliantly and consistently pushes the field toward a critical understanding of masculinity as a complex gender formation."—Christopher Breu, author of Hard-Boiled Masculinities

"How might we understand masculinity if we turn toward culture rather than biology? K. Allison Hammer uncover(s) remakings of masculinity that center care, porosity, and unruly alliances—uplifting models for the precarious now."—Amber Jamilla Musser, author of Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance