The Dynamics of Masculinity in Contemporary Spanish Culture

This collection of essays explores cultural phenomena that are shaping masculine identities in contemporary Spain, asking and striving to answer these compelling questions: what does it mean to be a man in present-day Spain? How has masculinity evolved since Franco's dictatorship? What are the dynamics of masculinity in contemporary Spanish culture? How has hegemonic masculinity been contested in cultural productions? This volume is comprised of sixteen essays that address these very questions by examining literary, cultural and film representations of the configurations of masculinities in contemporary Spain. Divided into three thematic units, starting with the undermining of the monolithic Francoist archetype of masculinity, continuing with the reformulation of hegemonic masculinity and finishing with regional emergent masculinities, all of the volume´s essays focus on the redefinition of Spanish masculinities. Principal themes of the volume include alternative families, queer masculinities, performative masculinities, memory and resistance to hegemonic discourses of manliness, violence and emotions, public versus private masculinities, regional masculinities, and marginal masculinities. This exploration not only produces new insights into masculinity, but also yields nuanced insights into the recuperation of memory in contemporary Spain, the reconfiguration of the family, the status of women in Spanish society, and regional identities.

Ana Corbalan is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Alabama. She holds her Ph.D. from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her books include El cuerpo transgresor en la narrativa espanola contemporanea (Libertarias, 2009) and Memorias fragmentadas: Mirada transatlantica a la resistencia femenina contra las dictaduras, which is forthcoming with Iberoamericana/Vervuert in 2015.

Lorraine Ryan is a Birmingham Fellow in the University of Birmingham, UK. She has published on the sociology of memory and representation of memory, gender and spatiality in contemporary Spanish culture in journals such as Hispania, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, and Memory Studies.