Demonstrates the theoretical relevance of developing critical pedagogical practices in which issues of representation and democratic transformation mutually inform each other. Engages a popular Hollywood film, "Baby Boy," in order to demonstrate how this film might be used as both a social transcript and a form of public pedagogy. (SG)

Argues that the myth of the self-made man commits a fundamental error by downplaying the importance of social definition and equating masculine growth with an escape from the boundaries of origins (race, class, sex) and institutions. Discusses the myth in terms of its history and writing pedagogies employed in some classrooms. (TB)

In her book "The Remasculinization of America," Susan Jeffords discusses the dynamics of how differences such as race and class are erased in filmic and literary representations of the Vietnam War. She asserts that one difference is not overcome by the battlefield: gender, a barrier that is depicted in the literature as natural and…