Graduation Year
2016
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
M.A.
Degree Name
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Degree Granting Department
Humanities and Cultural Studies
Major Professor
Daniel Belgrad, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Cheryl Rodriguez, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Andrew Berish, Ph.D.
Keywords
social construction, working class, gender performance, psychoanalytic criticism
Abstract
This thesis considers mid-20th century portrayals of working-class longshoremen’s masculinity within the context of emerging middle-class gender constructions. I argue that although popular culture presents a roughly standardized depiction of longshoremen as “manly men,” these portrayals are significantly nuanced to demonstrate the difficulties working-class men faced as they attempted to navigate socio-cultural and socio-economic shifts related to class and the performance of their male gender. Specifically, I consider depictions of longshoremen’s disruptive masculinity, male identity formation, and masculine-male growth as reactions to paradigmatic shifts in American masculinity. Using three aspects of longshoremen’s non-work lives presented in A View from the Bridge, “Edge of the City,” and “On the Waterfront”—the house, the home, and leisure/recreational activity—I ground discussions of the longshoremen’s negotiation of masculinity within a conceptual framework based in masculinity studies, social construction, and psychoanalytic criticism. To both complement and supplement the core literary and cultural analyses presented in this text, oral history interviews have been included to provide a contextual basis for understanding longshoremen culture in the 1950s.
Scholar Commons Citation
Taylor, Tomaro I., "Longshoremen's Negotiation of Masculinity and the Middle Class in 1950s Popular Culture" (2016). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/6592
