Masculinity in Times of Change Online Symposium.

Tickets available now at Eventbrite for our 3 day symposium featuring presentations, artists talks and roundtable discussions. One ticket provides access to 10 events and all of them are free! Get your ticket here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/masculinity-in-times-of-change-mascnet-online-symposium-tickets-162257505567

Infrastructures of Intimacy and the Deplatforming of Sex, Susanna Paasonen – Online Lecture, 11 Feb 2021, 18:00GMT

Susanna InfrastructuPaasonen’s feminist and queer analysis focuses on the question of online pornography and new ways of connecting via platforms and chatrooms, as in her 2011 Carnal Resonance: Affect and Online Pornography. Taking exception from the prevalent techno-skepticism that summarizes online communication and representation uncontestably as forms of commodification and alienation, Paasonen’s talk ‘Infrastructures of Intimacy and the Deplatforming of Sex‘ discusses the stakes of the new potentials of getting together online – aesthetically, socially, sexually, and politically. For Paasonen it is the tactile dimensions of online encounters, more so than the visual, that affect us as ‘resonance’ or ‘grasp’ us.

This lecture series takes queer theory’s conversation about intimacy as a starting point to discuss some of its cultural possibilities, mediated forms, and philosophical trajectories in the context of Corona.

To register for a place to join this event, please click here.

Call for Papers: Masculinity in Times of Change

We are living through a period of profound change and the title of our third symposium event seems more timely than we could have imagined.

Following on from the success of our two previous physical network events in Birmingham on Masculinity and Body Image and Berlin on Masculinity and National Identity, our third symposium event will be held online, 20th – 22nd September 2021, to enable as many people as possible to engage with the work of network.

For the full Call for Papers, please click here. Abstracts should be sent to Professor John Mercer (john.mercer@bcu.ac.uk) and Professor Clarissa Smith (clarissa2.smith@northumbria.ac.uk). The deadline for submissions is Friday 7th May 2021.

Tagmasc

Birmingham’s cultural event is represented by the Tagmasc project, led by photographer Ming de Nasty. The project explores issues around LGBTQ+ male identity and masculinity and comprises 10 photographic portraits of LGBTQ+ men accompanied by interviews where they discuss their gendered identities and how they position themselves against and alongside normative models of masculinity.

Upcoming events

Postponement of final event
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have made the regrettable decision to postpone our final event, Masculinity in Times of Change, to a later date. This final event will now be held on 29th September 2021 at Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC) and will continue to have the same theme: Masculinity in Times of Change.

An updated Call for Papers and deadline will be circulated later on in the year. Those who submitted abstracts for the event as originally planned will have them carried over into the next cohort.
Call for Papers: For its 15th issue, the journal Monograf is publishing a special edition on ‘Masculinities and Literature’, guest edited by Murat Goc-Belgin. Deadline for article submissions is December 1st 2020, for Spring 2021 publication. To access the full CfP and all information, click here.
Call for Partners: The What’s masc? project are looking for 4 organisations working with queer youth from EU member states to form partnerships and a youth exchange programme to explore positive embodiments of masculinities via a number of methods.

For all information, click here.
The University of Salford, Manchester, is hosting a one day symposium Deviant Pleasure Markets & Digital Technologies: Drugs, Sex, Money on Friday 14th February 2020, 10:00 – 17:00 with keynote speeches from Professor Susanna Paasonen, Professor Teela Sanders, Professor Ben Light and Dr Angus Bancroft.

For details about the conference, click here, and for the conference schedule click here.

To register via Eventbrite, please click here.
Call for Papers: Steering group member Jamie Hakim (University of East Anglia) and Kristian Møller (IT University of Copenhagen) invite contributions from cultural studies perspectives to a special edition of the journal Sexualities, ‘Chemsex Cultures‘, which seeks to interrogate the ways chemsex emerges as a cultural phenomenon. The full CfP can be accessed here; titles, abstracts and references should be submitted by the end of January 2020.
Call for Papers: Colleagues at the University of Southern Denmark invite submissions of papers to a special edition of Somatechnics on ‘Medicalized Masculinities‘. The full CfP can be accessed here; submissions should be made by 1st February 2020.
Call for Papers: Steering group member João Florêncio (University of Exeter) welcomes submissions for the upcoming conference Viral Masculinities to be held at University of Exeter on 1st and 2nd September 2020. To download the full Call for Papers with further information and details, please click here.
Mediating Sexualities: Network member Florian Vörös and Beatrice Damian will be hosting the two-day conference Mediating Sexualities: The sexual politics of media production and regulation at Lille University on November 3rd and 4th 2020. For more information about the scope and aims of the conference, please click here.
As part of the network, Mark McGlashan (BCU) and John Mercer (BCU) are editors for a collection of essays on Toxic Masculinity: Men, Meaning and the Media and they are now welcoming abstracts for essays that meet the brief. To download the brief, which contains all information, please click here.

Past events

Masculinity and National Identity – 17th January 2020, Berlin
The second event as part of our AHRC funded Masculinity, Sex and Popular Culture research network was held on Friday 17th January 2020 at Village Berlin. The theme for the event was Masculinity and National Identity.

To view the programme, click here.
Prior to the Masculinity and National Identity symposium (below), Mascnet hosted a live performance and a panel discussion that sought to address the topic on Thursday 16th January 2020 at the Schwules Museum.
Gender and Communication ECREA: Network PI John Mercer delivers the keynote lecture at the Media, Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Europe at the University of Padua, 15th-16th November 2019, joined by network CoI Clarissa Smith for a roundtable discussion. To see more about the conference and view the full programme, click here.
Mascnet PI Professor John Mercer appears as a guest speaker on the Tortoise ThinkIn panel What is it to be a man in the 21st Century?, August 2019
Masculinity, Sex and Popular Culture AHRC Network Launch
Masculinity and Body Image symposium (Birmingham City University), Friday 3rd May 2019, 9.30 – 18.15

To see the full symposium programme, please click here.

This event is the first in a 24-month AHRC funded research network that will explore the contemporary sexualisation of masculinity and intends to set an ambitious agenda for subsequent research. The network steering group includes Begonya Enguix, Joao Florencio, Jamie Hakim, Mark McGlashan, Peter Rehberg and Florian Voros.
Toxic Masculinity and Male Body Image: City Talk (Birmingham City University), Thursday 2nd May 2019, 18.30 – 20.00
To register, click here.

Birmingham City University are hosting a special event focusing on the challenges presented by toxic masculinity.

The event will bring together a panel of key experts to discuss topics surrounding modern day masculinity and the negative perceptions of male body image.

The talk will see Birmingham City University’s Professor John Mercer lead a panel of key experts including Heather Widdows, author of Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal, former Attitude journalist Dr Jamie Hakim.

Joining the panel will be critically acclaimed author and journalist Mark Simpson, who coined the terms “Metrosexual” and “Spornosexual”.

Panellists will tackle topics including the impact of toxic masculinity on society and the pressures men experience in relation to body image. With a focus of how pressures of appearances on social media link to a negative impact on mental health.