Dr Satish Padiyar

course description

 

The course focuses on visual depictions of the male body in nineteenth-century art, in the work of David, Canova, Ingres, Géricault, Courbet, Manet, Caillebotte, and others.

The political and theoretical challenges of recent feminism have provoked a range of cultural responses about men and masculinity. In particular, since the 1990s there has been continuing debate about whether masculinity is irrevocably ‘in crisis’, due to the erosion of once-secure gender boundaries, sexual identities and roles. From this contemporary perspective the course will address a number of questions. How might we understand the shift in nineteenth-century history paintings from homoerotically charged androgynous male nudes to ones of hyper-inflated masculinity? And what happens to the represented classical body itself in the face of a powerful emerging concentration on modernity and modern life? The course will also focus on depictions of the aestheticized male body in relation to questions of colonialism and racialized others, the homosocial and military ethos, and the history of sexuality.

While focusing primarily on French painting of the period, attention will also be paid to the corporeal aesthetic of nineteenth-century sculptors Canova and Thorwaldsen, Leighton and Rodin; and to late nineteenth-century photography of the male nude. 


Dr Padiyar’s course will be of especial interest to those wishing to engage with current theories of self, sexuality, desire and vision, as articulated by Judith Butler, Jacques Lacan, Eve Sedgwick, Kaja Silverman, and Klaus Theweleit.  

language and other requirements


Standard entry requirements.