Important Dates –

Deadline for submissions: May 5th 2025
Notification of acceptance: May 25th 2025
Date of seminar: November 19th 2025
Contact email: masculinitieseurope@gmail.com
Planned platform (to be confirmed at a later date): MS Teams

Aims and scope of the seminar:

The interdisciplinary seminar offers researchers from various fields the opportunity to reflect on the diversity of masculinity in mediated spaces in widely understood European contexts. We are interested in contributions that interpret masculinity in its hybrid sense (Bridges & Pascoe, 2014) or investigate hegemonic variations and performances of masculinities (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005); however, the seminar also aims to act as a space for reflection on topics that go beyond hegemonic and hybrid masculinities.

The seminar aims to focus on mediated masculinities in Europe, as the American context has been discussed and described in much detail (McGlashan, Koller, Heritage, 2023). Contributions that cover masculinity performance and how masculinity is understood in varied European contexts are most welcome. We also invite papers that present a comparative approach to masculinity, investigating the similarities and differences between varying manifestations of Western (or European) masculinities.

The role of media organizations and their impact on the configurations of masculinity, whether they be hegemonic (Connell, 1987; Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005), hybrid (Bridges & Pascoe, 2004) or other, has been widely critically examined; however, the fundamental shifts in communication technologies at the dawn of the 20th century and on traditional media formats has had a profound impact on relationships between social actors, understood as something that acts or upon which activity is granted within a network of distinct nodes (Latour, 1987; 1996; 2006). The move from real- to virtual spaces where social identities are performed and negotiated has reduced the impact of traditional media organizations in determining these configurations. In what Manuel Castells (1996) dubs the “Information Age”, there is now a continuing tension between the social network, which has replaced previously extant modes of hierarchical social organization, and the self, where individual personal practices reaffirm social identities, including gender. The arena for negotiating social meaning has shifted from physical to virtual spaces, with these spaces becoming the primary sites for reaffirmation of social identities and, by extension, the primary site of discursive manifestations of gendered identity markers (Van Dijk, 1998). It is therefore on these virtual platforms, through the consumption of multimodal native digital media, that contemporary masculinities are structured, ordered, and reinforced.

The separation between the virtual and the real world has grown increasingly thin, and the possible off-line consequences of online discourse for European countries have become apparent in recent years; one need only examine the French government’s Haute Commision à l’égalité 2023 report on the alarming persistence of sexist stereotypes due to online platforms, or a leaked 2025 report from the British government linking periods of civil unrest to the radicalization potential of antifeminist online spaces. The latter, markedly, specifically named the online “manosphere” as being a hub for hostile discourse.

The online seminar therefore seeks to discuss the following questions: how is masculinity, whether hegemonic, hybrid, hyper, or other, being negotiated in European online spaces or in virtual media forms? What are the possible consequences of the technological affordances of online platforms on the discursive construction of masculinity? How does the multimodality of these platforms structure the discourse on gender-based expectations of masculinity? How are the virtual and the real worlds interlinked? Is the label “manosphere” still applicable to contemporary studies/approaches to masculinity in mediated spaces? This is not a seminar wholly dedicated to the anglophone manosphere, therefore we also welcome contributions discussing local manifestations of the discourse space, especially non-anglophone ones.

We invite contributions on, but not limited to the following:

Masculinity discourses
Masculine performativity online
Identity and masculinity
Intersectional perspectives and masculinity
Hybrid masculinity
Hegemonic masculinity
The label of the manosphere
Masculinity and computer-mediated communication
Masculinity in gaming sites
Non-cis- or hetero-normative masculinities in media spaces
Multimodal aspects of mediated masculinity
Portrayals of fatherhood
Masculinities and posthumanism
Masculinity in society

The proposed papers may be informed by a singular discipline; however, we encourage participants to take an interdisciplinary perspective on the subject.

Submission process

If you would like to participate in the seminar, please submit your proposals for 20-minute papers in a 250-350 word abstract along with 5-10 keywords and references. The abstract should include the theoretical lens of the project, as well as the methodological approach. Please also include a biographical note with your affiliation (100 words) and send it via email to Sid Campé and Olga O’Toole (masculinitieseurope@gmail.com).

Organisers

Sid Campé, PhD student (sid.campe@uha.fr)

Université de Haute-Alsace, Mulhouse, France and Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic

Olga O’Toole, Associate professor (olga.otoole@uj.edu.pl)

Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland

The language of the seminar is English, however we strongly encourage contributions that investigate or discuss topics in languages other than English.

Selected papers will be chosen for publication for an edited volume planned for 2027.

There is no fee to participate.