Content area
Full Text
Judith Kegan Gardiner, ed. Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia UP, 2002. xi + 386 pp.
When so many essay collections seem uncomfortably patched together, tapestries of the vaguely related and not entirely congruent, it is refreshing to encounter a collection as well constructed and cohesive as Judith Kegan Gardiner's Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory. The essays are diverse and often demanding, ranging in style and scope from R. W. Connell's "autobiographical documentation of gender" to Marion B. Ross's thought-provoking desire to "push the cultural logic of race castration [. . .] as it collides with the cultural logic of rape." The book, then, has a dual purpose. It takes stock of a complex history of theoretical debate-a project begun in Gardiner's introduction and furthered by the opening two essays-and it seeks to push beyond reiteration to new possibilities in critical thinking about gender. The aim is to take nothing for granted, and the project's introduction promises to "question both the model of a static hegemonic masculinity and the political efficacy of celebrating various alternative masculinities."
The volume boasts...