Michael Snyder

Bio: Michael Snyder is an academic researcher from University of Oklahoma. The author has contributed to research in topics: Homosexual panic & Homosociality. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 7 citations.

Crises of Masculinity: Homosocial Desire and Homosexual Panic in the Critical Cold War Narratives of Mailer and Coover

Abstract: Applying the theories of Guy Hocquenghem, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Louis Althusser, this essay identifies Robert Coover's novel The Public Burning and Norman Mailer's novels of the sixties, An American Dream and Why Are We in Vietnam?, as cold war critical national narratives. The essay discusses the crises of masculinity provoked in the American fifties and sixties by anticommunist discourse, which rhetorically linked communism and homosexuality (and thus, in the psychiatric and popular imaginary, effeminacy) as "perversions." These novels critique the way homosociality functions to consolidate patriarchal power, and the resulting institutional homophobia, homosexual panic, and violence. These concerns center on the anus and anality, a trope signifying male homosexuality, and subverting the dominant discourse. The essay also discusses Mailer's and critic Leslie Fiedler's homophobia and concludes that Coover, with his use of subversive Bakhtinian carnival laughter, presents a more devastating, comprehen...

Homosociality: In Between Power and Intimacy

Abstract: The concept of homosociality describes and defines social bonds between persons of the same sex. It is, for example, frequently used in studies on men and masculinities, there defined as a mechanis...

Gender of a Nation: Propaganda in World War II and the Atomic Age

Abstract: This paper explores the shifting presentations of gender in U.S. wartime propaganda aimed at the American public during World War II and the early Eisenhower Era. Through the images and texts produced during these times, a clear portrait of an idealized national portrayal of gender emerged, showing a more masculine overall image during WWII and a more feminine overall during the early 1950s. Gender roles were far less rigid in the war years than in the Cold War, as illustrated by the propaganda shown.

Teaching Querelle in the Composition Classroom

Abstract: Ruminating on the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick around failed pedagogy and a confused cat, I consider ways to provoke new streams of critical thought in my composition students around issues of gender and sexuality without "pointing." Thinking about Jean Genet's novel Querelle and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film of the same name, I delineate the specifics of how I teach these two difficult, often incomprehensible texts in an introductory class. In reviewing the confusion these works can provoke in student discourse upon reading and viewing the texts, I emphasize the role of disorientation and dislocation in the mapping of student thinking and writing, ultimately reemphasizing the importance of nondemagogic, malleable pedagogy in the teaching of sexuality and gender, particularly with composition students who are exploring and amplifying their voices. Teaching Querelle is like unleashing a virus of confusion and intrigue on student writers, but the incoherence it creates also creates opportunities to explore new ideas and horizons in these developing thinkers/writers.