Overview
Examines literary depictions of ""mannish"" pregnant women and metaphors of male pregnancy to reframe the relationship between creativity and gender in modernism. Who is taken seriously as an artist? What does gender have to do with it? Is there a relationship between artistic creation and physical procreation? In Masculine Pregnancies, Aimee Armande Wilson argues that modernist writers used depictions of ""mannish"" pregnant women and metaphors of male pregnancy to answer these questions. The book places ""masculine pregnancies"" in works by Djuna Barnes, Willa Cather, William Faulkner, and Ezra Pound in the context of interwar debates about eugenics, immigration, midwifery, and sexology in order to redefine the relationship between creativity and gender in modernism. Attending to recent developments in queer theory, Wilson challenges the critical assumption that figures of masculine pregnancy necessarily reinforce oppressive norms. The book's first half shows how some writers indeed used such figures to delegitimize artists who were not white, male, and heterosexual. The second half then shows how others used masculine pregnancies to extend legitimacy to mannish women, dark-skinned immigrants, and their (pro)creations-and did so a century before the current boom in queer pregnancy narratives.
Full Product Details
Author: Aimee Armande Wilson
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Imprint: State University of New York Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.50cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.313kg
ISBN: 9781438495606
ISBN 10: 1438495609
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 02 June 2024
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
"""Masculine Pregnancies opens up important new perspectives on queer reproduction. Drawing on cutting-edge work in queer and trans studies, and carefully considering the entanglements of gender, sexuality, racialization, and class, Wilson reveals the uses, meanings, and contemporary legacies of masculine pregnancy in the modernist period."" — Jana Funke, coeditor of Interrogating Lesbian Modernism: Histories, Forms, Genres"
""this book does contribute to queer theory, interwar cultural history, and modernist literary studies in a significant way. It will appeal to those who want to explore where these branches of inquiry intersect."" — CHOICE ""Masculine Pregnancies opens up important new perspectives on queer reproduction. Drawing on cutting-edge work in queer and trans studies, and carefully considering the entanglements of gender, sexuality, racialization, and class, Wilson reveals the uses, meanings, and contemporary legacies of masculine pregnancy in the modernist period."" — Jana Funke, coeditor of Interrogating Lesbian Modernism: Histories, Forms, Genres
"""…this book does contribute to queer theory, interwar cultural history, and modernist literary studies in a significant way. It will appeal to those who want to explore where these branches of inquiry intersect."" — CHOICE ""Masculine Pregnancies opens up important new perspectives on queer reproduction. Drawing on cutting-edge work in queer and trans studies, and carefully considering the entanglements of gender, sexuality, racialization, and class, Wilson reveals the uses, meanings, and contemporary legacies of masculine pregnancy in the modernist period."" — Jana Funke, coeditor of Interrogating Lesbian Modernism: Histories, Forms, Genres"
Author Information
Aimee Armande Wilson is Associate Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Kansas. She is the author of Conceived in Modernism: The Aesthetics and Politics of Birth Control.
