Constructions of Black Masculinity

Combining Literary and Cultural Studies and drawing on theory from Gender Studies, African American Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Film and Visual Studies, and Psychoanalysis, Constructions of Black Masculinity analyzes the interplay of race, gender, and sexuality that has governed the framing of African American males since the Enlightenment.
Focusing on lynching and castration rituals in the Reconstruction period, the study reveals how Black manhood has traditionally been imagined through the paradigms of hypermasculinity and emasculation. While corresponding stereotypes of the phallic rapist, the docile Uncle Tom, or the ridiculous Sambo persist in Ralph Ellison's depiction of African American manhood in the pre-Civil Rights years, "Invisible Man" (1952) embraces the notion of invisibility to acknowledge and overcome these demeaning cultural images in favor of a Black male identity based on tricksterism, narrative agency, and vernacular culture.

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