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Abstract

This paper addresses the reluctance of scholars who study the Holocaust professionally to acknowledge insights from the burgeoning discipline of men's studies. In recent years the scholarly study of masculinity has exploded among anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, and scholars of religion. The perspectives animating this “new men's studies” appear to be quite compatible with—and even a natural complement to—the gender scholarship that has made such a signal contribution to our understanding of women's experience in the Holocaust. Why, then, has the study of masculinity achieved so little scholarly recognition in the interdiscipline of Holocaust Studies? The paper suggests answers to this question, while attempting to demonstrate the relevance of gender analysis for interpreting the experience and behavior of perpetrators at every level of the Nazi Final Solution.

Keywords

masculinity new men's studies Holocaust Studies gender analysis perpetrators

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Ordinary Masculinity: Gender Analysis and Holocaust Scholarship

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