This handbook provides an overview of representations of masculinities in Anglophone literatures worldwide. While Part One provides an introduction to the complexities of exploring masculinities across nations, the next parts revolve around a select number of masculinity-related topics that recur across contemporary Anglophone literatures, ranging from violence(s) to boyhood and fatherhood, to aging, or to alternative models of being a man. Crossing traditional boundaries across different literary genres, the collection analyzes fiction but also poetry, drama, short stories, and film adaptations of literary texts. It also challenges the distinction between high- and low-brow culture by incorporating chapters on hard-boiled fiction or domestic noir. The handbook will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of gender studies, cultural and literary studies, and postcolonial theory, among others.

Josep M. Armengol is Professor of U.S. Literature and Gender Studies at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. He has published on literary representations of masculinity in prestigious academic journals such as Signs, MELUS, Men and Masculinities, and Postcolonial Studies, among others. Some of his latest books include Masculinities and Literary Studies (2017), Aging Masculinities in Contemporary U.S. Fiction (2021), and Rewriting White Masculinities in Contemporary Fiction and Film (2023).

Ángel Mateos-Aparicio Martín-Albo is Associate Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. His most recent publications include “‘To Oldie Go’: From James T. Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard to Samuel Lord and the Reconstruction of the Aging Male Body in the Final Frontier,” in Armengol (ed.), Aging Masculinities in Contemporary U.S. Fiction (2021) and “‘Parasites in a Host Country’: Migrants, Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Other Zombies in The Walking Dead” (with Jesús Benito-Sánchez), in Amanda Ellen Gerke et al. (eds.), The Poetics and Politics of Hospitality in U.S. Literature and Culture (2020).