Books by Eric Patterson

On Brokeback Mountain: Meditations About Masculinity, Fear, and Love in the Story and the Film provides a close, detailed, comparative discussion of the short story and the film in relation to ways of understanding masculinity and love between men in American culture. It uses analytical ideas from gay and lesbian/queer studies, American studies, social history, film history, and literary history, but avoids specialized theoretical language in order to be accessible to the many people interested in the story and the film. Original, interdisciplinary, and engaging, On Brokeback Mountain is intended to be not only useful to academic specialists but also accessible and readable for any interested, educated reader. The two versions of Brokeback Mountain are significant for taking readers and audiences inside the perspectives of men who love men, showing what physical and emotional passion, and hostility toward that passion, may be like for them. The story and the film help in understanding the many men who love men and who don't fit stereotypes of gay men or participate in the gay/queer worlds of urban/academic communities, especially men in rural areas and in working class contexts. This book examines the presentation of friendship, sex, and love between men in Brokeback Mountain, as well as the depiction of homophobia and its effects on men who love men and their families. It relates the story and the film to the literary tradition of the homoerotic pastoral, the literary/movie tradition of the Western, and the tradition of the tragic romantic love story.

The Christian Realists investigates the contributions to practical and theoretical politics by a variety of mid-twentieth century thinkers such as Reinhold Niebuhr, John Foster Dulles, and Herbert Butterfield. In a period of international conflict and uncertainty caused by the rise of Nazism and Communism and the advent of nuclear weapons, these individuals argued for a "Christian" and a "realistic" approach to social and political problems. It is significant that for about a quarter century these men were listened to on Capitol Hill, in Westminster, on university campuses, in newspapers, as well as throughout the Western religious establishment. This volume provides chapters devoted to the thought of specific Christian realists: Niebuhr, Dulles, Martin Wight, John C. Bennett, and others. The book also includes a chapter on Niebuhr's influence on his secular disciples such as Hans Morgenthau and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and a chapter on the Catholic social thinker John Courtney Murray.

The purpose of this study is to focus on the intersection of religion and politics. Do different religions result in different politics? More specifically, are there significant contrasts between the political attitudes and behaviour of Catholics and Protestants in Latin America?