This panel examines how literary and cultural texts from diverse global traditions imagine masculinity not merely as an individual identity but as a relational and communal practice. In an era marked by migration, political polarization, social fragmentation, environmental crisis, and renewed struggles for collective empowerment, narratives of masculinity have become central sites through which communities negotiate belonging, responsibility, vulnerability, and resistance.

While dominant models of masculinity have often been associated with hierarchy, authority, nationalism, and exclusion, contemporary world literatures increasingly depict alternative masculinities grounded in care, ethical responsibility, emotional openness, solidarity, and collective survival. Such representations challenge inherited structures of power while opening new possibilities for community formation and social transformation.

This panel invites comparative and transnational approaches that explore how literary texts, films, cultural narratives, and other expressive forms construct, critique, or reimagine masculinities within local and global communities. Particular attention may be given to how gender intersects with race, class, migration, coloniality, religion, ecology, technology, and cultural memory in shaping collective identities and practices of empowerment.

Situated within the broader concerns of World Literature and Comparative Literature, this session seeks to foster dialogue across regions, languages, and traditions while investigating how masculinities participate in the creation—or disruption—of empowered communities.

We welcome papers addressing, but not limited to:

Comparative constructions of masculinity across world literatures

Masculinity and migration, diaspora, or displacement

Literary representations of fatherhood, mentorship, and communal responsibility

Masculinities in Global South literatures

Masculinity and environmental or ecological communities

Masculinity, memory, and post-conflict reconstruction

Queer and non-hegemonic masculinities in world literature

Masculinity and cultural resistance under authoritarian regimes

Masculinity, religion, and collective belonging

Masculinity and affect in contemporary global fiction