Vol. 1, Issue 7, Part G (2015)

Abstract
Todd W. Reeser, the author of Masculinities in Theory: An Introduction is an Associate Professor of French and Gender Studies at the University of Pittsburg. He has published books and journals on gender and sexuality in Renaissance literature, critical theory, and French film. In the introductory section of his book Masculinities in Theory Reeser has tried to give a comprehensive account why masculinity, which is so ‘obvious’, should be studied at all. In the later part of the introductory section he clarified the construction of the so called obviousness of masculinity. Drawing from Roland Barthes’ Elements of Semiology Reeser points out how “the unmarked term is not simply and purely absence of meaning, but what he calls ‘a significant absence.’ Precisely because a term is unmarked, its silence speaks”. (Resser, 9) By studying the cross-cultural and cross temporal differences of masculinities the author has tried to put forward his conception of ever changing, unfixed and unstable nature of the construction of masculinity