On Homos, The Homeless and Le Dernier Cri of Montreal

So I'm sitting in Air Canada's Maple Leaf Lounge. There's Johnnie Walker Black Label on tap. For Free. I got here four hours early. You do the math. But as I quietly drink myself into oblivion and miss my boarding announcement, allow me to reflect on three days of intensive man talk. 

Field Report: The MANtreal Notebooks

Above, Vic Seidler, the keynote speaker, drones on and on about masculinity during the banquet. From what I can remember, he talked about how the greatest moment in his life was when a small child mistook him for John Lennon. He also said, "The body is in some way black. The body is in some way queer. The body is in some way Jewish....at least in the dominant Christian theology." Later I realized this was true.

What to Wear To A Men's Studies Conference?

In just a few hours I shall be attending my first academic conference. I woke up this morning racked with anxiety. What does one wear to these things? I want to be the hip young upstart, bursting with new ideas and good style. At the same time, I don't want to be too informal lest I alienate Michael Kimmel and other leading men's studies scholars. So I looked on IMDB for inspiration.

Field Study: Mantreal Tweets

Good morning. This is Joshua David Stein, Out magazine's editor-at-large. Today I'll be heading to the Canadian city of Montreal, which I call Mantreal (get it?), to attend the American Men's Studies Association 17th annual Conference on Men and Masculinities. The conference is a chance for leading masculinity scholars to present papers and fucking party so hard you'll be like "Woah!" and they'll be like, "Yeah, no big deal, we party hard."

I'll be Twittering the conference and my trip into the wilds of Quebecoise nightlife -- surely the first time an academic conference has been live Twittered. You can follow my exegesis via Out's Twitter but also via our blog. Check out the schedule here.

Here are a couple things I'm excited about:

• The Men in Popular Culture session featuring a talk on Representations of Masculinity in Disney Films (Aladdin! Sebastian! Shrek!) by Ryan Kelly and Greg Kerwin.

• Funny grad student fights!

• A talk by a guy called H. Alexander Welcome on "Richard Pryor's Nurturing Masculinity"

• The Men, Sports and Action panel including a talk on MMA, "Masculinity at Play" and the Homosocial Construction of Masculinity in the Military. HOTTT. 

• "He sounds like a fag" Defining masculinity in queer linguistic research. Perhaps the answer to the gay lisp question!?!?

• There's a stall at the Marché Jean-Tallon with smoked pig cheeks. I'll try to smuggle some back.

If you have any requests or suggestions of how to pass my nights and days, leave a comment. Not a moment will go by where I am not somewhat compulsively liveblogging or tweeting.

-- JOSHUA DAVID STEIN