Negotiating Hyphenated Masculinities in Russian-Jewish-American Immigrant Writing (working title)

The sociocultural constructions of postmodern masculinities rely on the multiplicity of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, class, and many other categories. Today, more than ever, these constructions represent challenging tasks for society and individuals. Immigrant men who are burdened with the additional task of integration into foreign and sometimes hostile environments, are overwhelmed by the multiplicity and the intersections of social categories. They thus struggle with, what I term, their hyphenated masculinities. I examine a corpus of 21st century Russian-Jewish immigrant narratives written by male writers in North America – namely Michael Alenyikov, David Bezmozgis, Mark Budman, Boris Fishman, Keith Gessen, Michael Idov, and Gary Shteyngart – in order to conceptualize the multilayered hyphenation but also the singularity of Russian-Jewish-North American masculinities. Analyzing a selection of fictional and semi-fictional works, I will argue that these texts comment on the collective and individual construction of an underrepresented American identity. Indeed, it is a compound identity that can only be grasped by a subgenre which is situated in-between Immigrant Novel, Urban Fiction and Autobiography.

Kurzbiographie

Wolfgang Müller, geb. 1988 in der Ukraine, studierte bis 2015 Anglistik, Germanistik und Komparatistik an der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. Das Thema seiner Abschlussarbeit war die Verhandlung von Männlichkeitsentwürfen in den Vietnamkriegsdramen des amerikanischen Autors David Rabe. Neben seinem Studium arbeitete er am Lehrstuhl für Amerikanistik der HHU und hielt unter anderem Seminare zur Theatertheorie und -praxis ab. Im Wintersemester 2016/2017 erhielt er das Promotionsvorbereitungsstipendium der a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne. Seit April 2017 promoviert Wolfgang Müller als Kollegiat der a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School im Fach Amerikanistik unter der Betreuung von Herrn Prof. Dr. Hanjo Berressem und Frau Prof. Dr. Maike Lehmann.

Kontakt: wmuelle5smail.uni-koeln.de

Publikationen

Negotiating Myths of Masculinity in David Rabe's Vietnam Plays. Herne: Gabriele Schäfer Verlag (2017).

Lehrveranstaltungen

Wintersemester 2015/16

“Working with Woody Allen's God – A Workshop on Dramatic Theory and Performance”, American Studies, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf

Sommersemester 2015

“English/American Drama – A Workshop on Theory and Performance”, American Studies, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf

_{Titelbild: “Reading Mama's Dostoyevsky” (Foto: Wolfgang Müller) // Portraitfoto: Patric Fouad}