“Advice from the Garage: Masculinity Reexamined” a lecture presented by the Fort Lewis College History Department Chair Michael Martin, occurred Thursday, Feb. 25.

The Lecture

The lecture, part of the Lifelong Learning Lecture Series, was followed by a 30 minute question and answer with the 67 audience members, Judith Reynolds, the founding member of the Lifelong Learning Lecture Series said. The Lifelong Learning Lecture Series features one free featured lecture every week.

The talk, based around Martin’s GWS 300 Masculinities class last semester, was about discussing the idea of redefining what it means to be masculine in Western society, Martin said.

“The goal of the talk was to not so strictly define masculinity as a solely male attribute,” he said. “This is an attribute that can cut across gender, cuts across race, class. It’s a broad category. Gender is fluid. When we try to restrict ourselves, that’s where it becomes harmful.”

Background  

Before he was hired at FLC 12 years ago, Martin was hired to teach a masculinity course at Western Michigan University, he said.

“It’s always been with me,” he said. “It’s always been on my mind. Which is why it’s a topic I’ve always studied and really enjoyed studying.”

The problem he ran into while designing the course was condensing it down to one semester, he said. Initially, Martin designed the class as a 2 year course, which would have taken four semesters to teach.

“Of course, that’s not acceptable so I had to cut it down to 14 weeks,” he said. “And that was hard.”

Preparation

Martin was asked by Reynolds to give the talk in November, Martin said. He has been thinking about it since she asked.

“I would go to bed, shut off the lights and two minutes later I would wake up with an idea for the talk,” Martin said.  “It took months to write, but it was writing itself because it was just at the front of my mind.”

Generally, the allocated amount of time for the Lifelong Learning lectures are 45 minute to an hour for the talk, and 30 minutes for the Q&A,  Reynolds said. This talk had to be cut off when the Q&A hit its maximum time.

“I think what was nice is that we had to stop the conversation because we were just running so long,” Martin said. “That’s an encouraging sign.”