Alternative Masculinities in Feminist Speculative Fiction

Alternative Masculinities in Feminist Speculative Fiction: A New Man traces efforts within contemporary American feminist utopias to imagine healthier conceptions of manhood. As this analysis illuminates, feminist works envisioning the improved society and its attending masculinities make up an overlooked site for mining new masculinities. During the years in which such utopias moved from the margins to the mainstream, the early 1970s to the mid-2010s, these novels grew more complex, challenging essentialist conceptions of masculinity and female experience. As this analysis demonstrates, these texts vary in their focus, but are united by an interest in transforming patriarchal masculinities and replacing them with an alternative informed by second wave and intersectional feminism. This book analyzes the centrality of such alternative masculinities to these ideal societies and the ways feminist writers present in their fiction new conceptions of manhood pivotal to discussions surrounding the ongoing crisis of American masculinity.