The Manly Modern - Masculinity in Postwar Canada (Hardcover)

During the Great Depression and Second World War, many men were first out of work and then away from their families. After the war came attempts to re-establish a previous gender hierarchy by emphasizing men's modernity, allegedly superior rationality, and ability to handle risk. However, this strategy had deeply ambivalent repercussions. The Manly Modern traces the contradictory history of what happened when men's alleged modernity became one of their defining features. The Manly Modern demonstrates the impact of the insistence on men's modernity in the postwar years. Through a series of case studies covering such diverse subjects as car culture, mountaineering, war veterans, murder trials, and a bridge collapse, this book shows how the very idea of what it meant to be modern was gendered. Christopher Dummitt also shows that the promotion of manly modernism brought with it unintended consequences with long-lasting effects. A strong current of anti-modernist sentiment bubbled just beneath the surface of postwar masculinity, which created rumblings about the state of modern manhood that ironically prefigured the tensions that burst forth in sixties radicalism. Modern will appeal to scholars and students in history, gender studies, and cultural studies, as well as to readers interested in the history and social construction of gender.