Civilisation, Masculinity and the Body

This project probes the historical tensions between masculinity and civilisation in America, Australia, Britain and France to understand how such tensions have impacted upon the male experience of bodily and emotional boundaries since the nineteenth century. This will be achieved by analysing the history of men's engagement with health and sexuality, diet and obesity, muscularity and body image, and the dramatisation of the male body in beach culture. This project represents a new way of approaching the history of masculinity both as representation and as lived experience, and will result in a book on the history of the male body in the West.