Fills a gap in the international literature by offering new insights into the heterogeneous ways in which African men are performing, negotiating and experiencing masculinity.Through their analysis of the depictions in film and literature of masculinities in colonial, independent and post-independent Africa, the contributors open some key African texts to a more obviously politicized set of meanings. Collectively, the essays provide space for rethinking current theory on gender and masculinity: - how only some of the most popular theories in masculinity studies in the West hold true in African contexts; - howWestern masculinities react with indigenous masculinities on the continent; - how masculinity and femininity in Africa seem to reside more on a continuum of cultural practices than on absolutely opposite planes; - andhow generation often functions as a more potent metaphor than gender. Lahoucine Ouzgane is Associate Professor of English & Film Studies, University of Alberta, Canada.

Introduction Part I MAN & NATION IN AFRICA - Lahoucine OuzganeThe anxious phallus: the iconography of impotence in Quartier Mozart & Clando - Jane BryceThe homoerotics of nationalism: white male-on-male rape & the 'Coloured' subject in Mark Behr's The Smell of Apples - Lindsey Michael Banco'Wild men' & emergent masculinities in post-colonial Kenyan popular fiction - Tom OdhiamboThe anonymity of manhood: unmasking shadow selves in Assia Djebar's Ombre sultane - Najat RahmanThe rape continuum: masculinities in the works of Nawal El Saadawi & Tahar Ben Jelloun PART II ALTERNATIVE MASCULINITIES - Lahoucine Ouzgane'Coming unstuck': masculine identities in post-independence Zimbabwean fiction - Patricia AldenImported alternatives: changing Shona masculinities in Flame & Yellow Card - Katrina Daly ThompsonNgugi wa Thiong'o & the crisis of Kenyan masculinity - Andrew HammondFather Africa: counter-narratives of masculinity in Ousmane Sembene's Faat Kiné & Moolaadé - Tarshia L. StanleyThe eternal other: authority of deficit masculinity in Asian-African literature - Justus K. Siboe MakokhaRecent trends in the treatment of homosexualities in literature & film by African artists - Marc EpprechtRe-membering the last king of Dahomey: postcolonial masculinities & diasporic desires - Wendy Knepper