Anthropology Colloquium is the department’s speaker series that invites a mixture of anthropologists from within and outside of UBC to present their research. This speaker series is scheduled throughout the academic year, typically with a lunch reception in the AnSo Lounge.
Men Are Animals: The Perils of Naturalizing Male Violence and Sexuality
Monday, March 7, 2016
Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies (PWIAS) Seminar Room
11:30am – 1:00 pm
Event Poster: PDF
Dr. Matthew Gutmann
Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Brown International Advanced Research Institutes at Brown University.
Abstract
This lecture explores popular enthusiasm for putative scientific beliefs that men have minimal control over their sexual and violent “natures” and that they must be managed and restrained, usually by societal restrictions, and by the women in their lives. A folk biological narrative can be compelling when trying to understand gendered undercurrents in biological explanations about human behavior pervasive today in various societies. Nonetheless the biology of maleness may be more remarked upon than understood, and why and how analytic frames referencing heredity, genes, and hormones hold sway in the popular imaginary in three societies (China, Mexico, and the United States) at this particular historical moment rests on more than simply the credibility of scientific discovery.
Bio
Matthew Gutmann is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Brown International Advanced Research Institutes at Brown University. His research and teaching focuses on men and masculinities; public health; politics; and the military. His books include, The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City;The Romance of Democracy: Compliant Defiance in Mexico City; Changing Men and Masculinities in Latin America; Fixing Men: Sex, Birth Control and AIDS in Mexico; and Breaking Ranks: Iraq Veterans Speak out against the War (with Catherine Lutz).
Co-Sponsored by: Department of Anthropology and Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies
