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William G. Brozo Patricia Walter Teri Placker

I know the difference between a real man and a TV man: A critical exploration of violence and masculinity through literature in a junior high school in the hood
The authors attempted to help students think critically about violence and masculinity in order to point out options for life beyond their neighborhood.

2002 International Reading Association (pp. 530538)

ames, an adolescent African American and speaker of the title quote, was one of 14 seventh-grade boys and two seventh-grade girls who participated in an 8-week language arts unit, affectionately referred to by the students as Real Men. All students names are pseudonyms. The unit, developed and taught by the three of usBill, a university professor of reading, and Patty and Teri, the students teachers who combined their classeswas devoted to using literature as a crucible for critical reflection on violence and masculinity. The young adult novel Scorpions (Myers, 1988) was chosen to anchor the unit primarily because, like our students, the main characters in the story are in the seventh grade and are African American and Hispanic American. Furthermore, the events in the story surrounding the use of illegal firearms and gangs, while taking place in New York City, were not unlike the kinds of daily occurrences on the streets and in the alleys of the students neighborhood. Scorpions became an excellent catalyst for critical interrogation of masculinity and violence as perceived by these adolescents of color, most of whom live in poverty and without their fathers present, while offering a counterpoint to classroom explorations of alternatives to violence. The use of young adult literature has been urged as a touchstone for inquiry into masculinities of possibility (Brozo & Schmelzer, 1997). We built activities around events and characters from the book chapters, striving to bring the seventh graders to a broader aware-

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ness of the prevalence of violent masculinities. These activities were also intended to help students reflect seriously on their everyday experiences with other boys and men who uncritically accept violence as a necessary feature of masculine identity, and engage in self-critique of their own attitudes about violent male aggression.

other first-world countries, and and these statistics look increasingly grim for adolescents. One need only peruse facts (Garbarino, 1999; Kelly, 1996) about American males violent acts toward others as well as acts of self-destruction to appreciate the enormity of the problem:
Males commit 90% of all murders. High school boys are four times more likely than girls to be murdered. Boys are twice as likely as girls to be victims of violent crimes such as robbery and assault. Ninety-four percent of the nearly 1 million inmates in U.S. prisons are males. Nearly 125,000 youths, mostly males, are behind bars. Males are responsible for the vast majority of cases of domestic violence. The suicide rate for boys ages 10 to 14 is twice that of girls, four times higher for ages 15 to 19, and six times higher for ages 20 to 24.

The prevalence of violent masculinity

Each week as we read and discussed Scorpions we offered students prompts for discovering links between our book interpretations and their environment. Pervasive in the lives of most young adults in the United States, as with ours as teachers, are media models of violent masculinity; therefore, strategies involving consideration of the media portrayals of men were often employed. One such strategy asked students to document their television (TV) viewing, paying particular attention to the behavior of males. Another directed students to the daily newspaper to track the number of handgun-related crimes, as well as the gender of the perpetrator and victim. These strategies brought out animated and critical discussions. According to Campbell, Muncer, Guy, and Banim (1996), representations of male violence in newspapers, magazines, movies, and television dominate adolescent consciousness because of popular medias marked advantage in terms of cultural penetrance (p. 143). By the time boys are 18, they are likely to have seen on their TV screens alone an average of 26,000 murders, and untold numbers of physical and weapon-related violence, rapes, automobile crashes, and explosionsnearly all caused by males and nearly all victimizing males (Kipnis, 1994; Miedzian, 1991). Oversimplified media caricatures of males as emotionally cold and violent may act to reinforce aggressive behavior in boys (Grossman & Degaetano, 1999). Studies of adolescent violence indicate that fights occur chiefly between boys (Davis, Byrd, Arnold, Auinger, & Bocchini, 1999), and conversation and talk of aggressive acts are most likely to take place among all-male groups (Weisfeld, 1994). While the influence of media violence on children and adults remains in dispute, there is little doubt that the number of violent crimes in the U.S. is staggering as compared with virtually all

Though not a direct focus of our unit, bringing media images of masculinity and violence into the overall study of the themes in Scorpions is consistent with recent calls to teach media literacy (Alvermann & Hagood, 2000; Quesada, Miller, & Armstrong, 2000). Furthermore, helping adolescents develop critical consciousness of mass medias glorification of male violence may have the effect of reducing the frequency of violent acts and related behaviors (Farrell & Meyer, 1997).

Boys and girls in the hood

Jamess world is shared by the other seventhgrade students from his junior high school in a large south Texas city. Their neighborhood is Molina, a place unknown to most people outside its boundaries, though made famous a few years ago with the tragic death of the Tejano singer Selena who grew up just a few blocks from the school. In spite of its ephemeral association with this late glamorous music star, Molina is a community where gang members infest public housing, where children can point to crackhouses, where pit bull terriers pace menacingly behind chickenwire fences, and where men can be found standing idly on street corners or congregating in alleyways to throw dice and drink from bottles in brown paper bags. Like so many other boys and

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girls from the hood, the students entered our classroom each day wearing the psychic and, for some, the physical scars of their harsh environments. We chose to highlight James and three of his classmates in this article. They share in their own words the daily toil of life in the hood.
James. One thing I do not like about my neighborhood is everybody is trying to kill everyone. What I mean by this is you can be walking down the road and [a] car is coming, you move out of the way and they will get in front of you and they wont move until you get close to them and then they will move. Or they would carry guns or knifes around and threaten you and the only thing you can do is run.

Shantala is a tall, athletic, African American 13year-old whose mother lives in Houston. Shantala was given away as a little girl to a woman who is not a family member. There is not a father in the home and Shantala does not know her real dad. She wrote in her journal:
What kind of future do I want? To be in the W[N]BA [Womens National Basketball Association]. In a big house. A good job, a job that pays alot of money. Dewayne. I was riding my bike and I ran into a car. That was backing up and I hit it and I flew over the back end of the car. I hit the grown hard. Everybody was laughing at me and they didnt help me up or nothing....

James is a handsome, streetwise African American young man. He was the only student in the class whose father, though in his case not his mother, lived with him at home. Even so, as a hairdresser, Jamess dad was not often around during critical after school and early evening hours. James told us a story about coming home from school one afternoon and mindlessly punching the remote control only to discover that the TV, the stereo, and other household appliances had been stolen by his crackhead aunt who had broken in through a window earlier that day. Like Jamals constant musings on a better future in Scorpions, we wondered what kind of future our students envisioned for themselves. Jamess journal entry concerning his future reflects a high roller dream of wealth and glitter:
My dream is to become a business owner and have lots of money and a lot of sport cars. I would like to live in a manshion in Las Vegas. The kind of job I would whant will be a casino owner. Shantala. Yesterday, I came home and my sister went in my room and pulled everything out of my dresser and my closet and messed up my bed and I told my mom and she said dont worry about it and they will clean it up and they never did so I had to do it. And after I finisted I went in the kitchen and their were no food left for me and my dad made it worstest because he came over and it never got better.

Dewayne is a lanky African American boy with alert eyes and a wide smile. Dewayne told us at the beginning of the unit that he lived with his mother, father, brothers, and sisters. However, his grandfather told us Dewayne actually had been living with him for some time. In spite of the grandfathers characterization of Dewaynes father as a drug dealer, he was anxious to move Dewayne and his siblings out of his household and back to their father. Dewaynes dream journal entry reflects his desire for a carefree lifestyle with no restrictions:
I want to have a nice car. I would put the top back and wear my shades. I would cruise for miles. Maybe even right out of Texas. Ricardo. My friend he got shot sitting on the swings in the park. He was sitting on the swing with a gun in his pocket with the clip hanging out and a gang drove by and saw it and he got shoot with a .357 magnam.

Ricardo is a small-framed Hispanic American young man who lives with his mother, grandmother, and two younger sisters. His father moved back to Matamoros, Mexico and only rarely visits Ricardo. He and his family live in a cramped twobedroom apartment in Section 8 (subsidized) housing. The apartment complex is notorious in the area for extremely high rates of gang-related crime and teenage pregnancies. In spite of his home

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atmosphere, Ricardo has managed to keep himself out of any serious trouble, though home boys have begun exerting pressure on him to join their gang. He has the desire to take on the role of protector and supporter of the females in his life, but is still too young and without resources to know how to make this kind of contribution to his family. In response to our prompt to describe his dream of a better life, Ricardo wrote in his journal:
For my future I want to live in a [regular] hous and I dont know where I want to work, and my dream is to travel a round the world.

Elect police commissioners who wont allow these practices. Organize protests against police for racial profiling and harassment. Only put cops from the hood in the hood.

After a while you did something and the police came and got you.
With this line from Scorpions (p. 117), Jamal reveals his sense of despair over the ineluctability of a future marked by crime and prison. We used it for a compare and contrast activity of males who make good decisions and those who do not. We asked students to discuss amongst themselves whether they have control over their behavior and whether they have the choice to make good decisions. After a few minutes, we led the class in a discussion of these questions. We soon discovered how many boys held sentiments similar to Jamals. For instance, Dewayne commented that the police will stop people in cars just because they black. And Ricardo recounted a harrowing night a few years earlier when police, falsely believing they were busting a crackhouse, barged through the front door of his familys apartment with guns pointed. Shantala punctuated the conversation by stating, The police can be bad men, too. The realities of these young people, reflecting what some have argued are systematic inequalities of modern societies (Taylor, 1997, p. 2), left us disturbed, as it should. To insist that literacy is the key to virtuous cycles of private and professional life without acknowledging the influence of race and class would be callous and nave. We talked, therefore, about the unfortunate presence of racial profiling and police harassment and invited the class to think of ways to counter these injustices using nonviolent means. Our brainstorming produced the following potentially viable tactics:
Get more involved in city and local politics.

We followed the discussion by asking students to work in pairs to find pictures in magazines of males behaving in both admirable and reprehensible ways. Students made two columns on a piece of poster paper, and placed their cut-out pictures in either one depending on whether they believed the picture depicted positive or negative qualities of males. Not surprisingly, many students included among their pictures in the positive column one of a man and woman together, happy, in love. For example, Shantala and Maria found a photo of newlyweds, both smiling, the bride holding a bouquet, and wrote beneath it: This is a good man because he loves his wife. Another picture in the same column was of a father throwing a baseball around with his three sons. Below they had written: This is a good man because he is spending time with his kids. Negative portrayals invariably involved men with guns and knives. There were several pictures of men and boys buying, holding, and shooting handguns and rifles. One ominous photo on James and Dewaynes poster was of a big man, his face in shadow, holding a pistol, his shirt unbuttoned and a long red scar running the length of his torso. Their caption read: He been cut up so he have a gun for protection.

And now for your viewing pleasure....

One of the ongoing assignments we required of students in the unit was to maintain a log of the ways in which males are portrayed on television. Using a typography of problematic aspects of masculinity found in ONeil, Helms, and Gable (1986), and Harriss (1994) positive categories of men as standard bearers, we derived and defined the following masculine types for students: emotionally restrictive, obsessed with achievement and success, power/control hungry, physically and verbally abusive, blundering, scholarly, good Samaritan, and rebel against injustice. Students were asked to bring in names of males seen on TV identified with one or more of these categories, the shows

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on which they were observed, and brief notations concerning how they exemplified a certain type of masculinity. The following are Jamess responses after a typical week of viewing:
Sunday: Howard Stern, Howard Sterns talk show physically and verbally abusive He said all these really bad things about this little short man who was drunk. Monday: Wrestler Steve Austin, WCW Monday Nitro power/control hungry He talks real loud about how great he is and how he can kill everybody else and how no one can beat him. Tuesday: Charles Barkley, Houston basketball game physically and verbally abusive He punched another player and swore at the ref. Wednesday: Walker (Chuck Norris), Walker Texas Ranger emotionally restrictive He cant tell a woman that he really loves her but doesnt mind it at all when he kills a couple of guys. Thursday: Frasier (Kelsey Grammer), Frasier blundering Like a fool he makes such a fuss and doesnt stop talking after hardly hurting himself.

television; however, boys like James may not be exposed to them in their TV diets. The following small group conversation led by Teri over Jamess TV viewing log was an effort to problematize the meanings media transmit about male behavior (Luke, 1999) and how these meanings regulate gender (Martino, 1999).
Teri: What effect does watching these kinds of shows have on your thinking about males? Shantala: Why boys be so stupid and mean on TV? James: They look more stupid when they act like girls. Shantala: At least you dont see no girls shootin people all the time. Teri: Are these men James saw on TV behaving in ways you would like to copy? James: I know the difference between a real man and a TV man.... Shantala: Just because you know the difference dont mean your gonna act better than a TV man. Teri: How are they different, James? James: Real men dont go around killing people...everybody knows that.

Its all too real

Dear Jamal, Im sorry im convincing you to throw away your gun, but I dont want you to get heart, but now I think you should keep the gun for pretaction. Tito

A couple of things stood out for us as we reviewed Jamess categorizations and notes about TV men. First, we were pleased to find a critical level of recognition of the ways males are stereotypically represented in the media. Unsettling, however, was the reminder of the struggle many of us experiencewhen trying to promote an alternative possibility of masculinity for young adultsagainst the unending media stream of gender stereotypes flooding the consciousness of adolescents. Jamess images of a masculinity of violence, hustle, physical and psychological oppression, buffoonery, and emotional numbness bear special attention because the three categories of positive masculinity we asked him and his classmates to locate in their regular television watching (scholar, good Samaritan, rebel against injustice) were not on his list. To be sure, images of good, responsible, mature men can be seen on

The letter above was written by Ricardo after we asked the students to respond to the following question in their journals: If you were Tito what would you say in a letter to Jamal about what he should do with the gun? From the moment Jamal receives the handgun from a gang member, Scorpions deals with his dilemma over whether to use the gun in a way he thinks his older brother Randy, whos in prison, would respect, or to get rid of the weapon somehow. With the issue of what Jamal should do with the gun coming to a head, we decided the opportunity was ripe for an extensive and critical exploration of gun violence among juveniles.

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Then, in the midst of our work that day, just as we were initiating discussion and activities to help the class better understand the seriousness of this social phenomenon, Ms. Guerra, the principal, announced on the intercom: Teachers and students, I have terrible news to report to you. In Littleton, Colorado, near Denver, in a high school called Columbine High, two teenagers have just shot and killed several of their classmates and then they killed themselves. I would like all of you to join me in a moment of silence for the victims. Thank you. The news left all of us stunned. It was one thing to read fictionalized accounts of gun violence in a young adult novel and to discuss it as a classroom activity, but it was something entirely different to have that reality thrust upon us in such a stark and horrifying way that day. Patty immediately went to the television mounted on the wall in the corner of the room and turned it on, telling the class to put all materials away. Dazed, we spent the rest of the period watching the ongoing news coverage. The next week, with a new resolve, we started a debate with the students to focus their attention on critical issues related to gun violence. We began by conversing about the tragedy at Columbine High and how the teenage male shooters were able to commit this horrendous crime because of their easy access to guns and rifles. We divided the class into two large groups with the instructions to adopt and argue in defense of one of the perspectives we gave them. One perspective was that of a gun store owner whose shop is under threat of closure by a group of antihandgun citizens. The other perspective was that of the antihandgun citizens themselves. The debate began slowly with each side stating its position. Dewayne as spokesperson for the gun shop owner group said, No one could put us out of business just because they didnt like guns. He went on to say, We dont like that people use guns to kill other people but its not our fault. James countered for the antigun group by arguing, We dont want to have to put you out of business either, but its your guns that killed my son, so we dont have no choice. You cant prove that! exclaimed Shantala from the shop owners side. Where else people gonna get guns? You the ones selling them, the other side rejoined.

Eventually, after nearly everyone made at least one contribution to the debate, the dialogue wound down. We then asked both sides to spend a few minutes talking among themselves about ways to reduce gun violence even assuming gun manufacturers and gun shops will not be eliminated. We wrote the following recommendations on the chalkboard:
Parents should watch their kids so they dont mess with guns. Parents shouldnt leave guns lying around the house. Adults should help kids stay away from gangs because they always have guns. People who sell guns should be helped to make money some other way. Kids with guns in school should be kicked out for good. If a kid kills someone with a gun thats his parents the parents should have to go to jail too.

Celebrating the end with men who read

It all seemed to be over far too quickly when the time for the units finale had arrived. We were set up in the back of the cafeteria. Student posters and projects adorned the cinderblock walls, and clay figures and 3-D representations of scenes from Scorpions were displayed neatly on a long table. Another table was covered with copies of Scorpions and a variety of other student work created during the unit. As if to emphasize the difficulties of pushing against the grain by trying to help boys and girls in Molina envision new possibilities of masculinity, the news came to us that Ricardo was not going to be able to participate in our unit celebration because he had been suspended. Friday of the previous week, he played lookout for a friend of his who was caught stealing money from a teachers desk. Then on Monday he was in trouble again for hitting another boy in the jaw for talkin mess about the incident. We had to make the best of our final day together, in spite of Ricardos ill-timed absence. Ricardos behavior represents the difficulties of helping young men take up a new discourse of masculinity. The discourse of violent masculinity in popular and local culture dominates the lives of

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these young people. The gendered dimension of acting aggressively or violently is better understood through the comments Ricardo made to Patty upon his return to her classroom after spending 3 days in in-school suspension.
Stealing and fighting are just what we have been talking about for the past 2 months, Ricardo. These are ways of behaving that boys need to take control over, dont you think? Ricardo: Like, I know we been talking about boys doing bad stuff and all, but no one messes with me or my carnal (loosely translated slang for blood brother). Patty: But if we think that way, how does it ever end? The guy you punched, what if he thinks the same way as you, then hell want to get back at you, youll want to get back and him, and on and on.... Ricardo: Its like, where I live you dont walk when someones messin with you. Thats all I got to say. Patty:

finally his academic efforts at the University of Florida. Malcolm read passages from Martin Luther King Jr.s (1963) Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Looking out on the African American and Hispanic American young adults, he intoned:
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.... Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its boundaries. (p. 12)

To help us celebrate the conclusion of our unit, we gave our students colorful fliers announcing the event and asked them to urge their fathers, grandfathers, uncles, or male caregivers to join us. It was our hope that the men in the seventh graders everyday lives might be present to lend support to our efforts. Consistent with the theme throughout the unit of helping students entertain a vision of masculinity marked by achievement, nonviolence, and active literacy, we also asked men from a variety of professions to participate in our celebration. To our dismay, none of the students were accompanied by an adult male. The male guests the three of us invited did arrive, however, and were escorted by the students to view and converse about their book projects. Later, when we had all settled down with refreshments, Patty asked each guest to share with the class some thoughts about being men and being readers. Chuck Dugan, a kinesiology professor and former all-American gymnast, read from his favorite Walt Whitman poem, Song of Myself. Next was Malcolm Booker, an African American professor of science education, who candidly described his humble beginnings in rural Louisiana, then his basketball scholarship, and

With a couple more brief presentations from our last two guests, the final day of the Real Men unit drew to a close. Rene Zamora, a successful investment banker, revealed his love of thriller books. Doug Horner, a local actor, recited dialogue from A New Way to Pay Old Debts, a play by Elizabethan dramatist Philip Massinger (1910), because, Horner said, It has everything to do with choices young men make. We were struck by the lines he read uttered by Lady Allworth to her teenage son:
You are yet Like virgin parchment, capable of any Inscription, vicious or honourable. (Act 1, Scene 2, lines 102104)

When the bell rang signaling the end of class, the finality of the moment hit us. Though the seventh-grade teachers would have a few more weeks with these students until the end of the school year, this was, as it turned out, the last time Bill would ever see them. He purposely stood at the door of the cafeteria to be sure to say goodbye to these young people he had come to know so well; these boys and girls on the threshold of adulthood, who mightwith providence, inner strength, and just maybe the memory of our unittake the path least traveled for far too many residents of the hood. Like any other day, however, the class filed out; most stingy in offering hands for shaking, averting their eyes, raising their voices and quickening their steps as they went past him into the open-air hall between buildings.

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Survey of attitudes and beliefs about violence and masculinity: Sample pre- and postunit responses from Ricardo, Dewayne, James, and Shantala
1. When a man is being hassled by another man he needs to fight to get the man off his back. Ricardo Preunit answer: Yes Reason: Because the guy will keep messing with him. Postunit answer: No Reason: Because they can talk it out. 2. Men who walk away from a fight are sissies. Dewayne Preunit answer: Yes Reason: When you got to fight you got to fight. Postunit answer: No Reason: Even if youre stronger whats the use of fighting. 3. To show how strong they are men need weapons like knives and guns. James Preunit answer: Unsure Reason: Men should be able to have guns and knives. Postunit answer: No Reason: If theyre going hunting or something, thats okay, but they dont have to use them to fight. 4. You cant really be a man unless you get into a gang. Shantala Preunit answer: Unsure Reason: You got to be really tough to be in a gang. Postunit answer: No Reason: Youre a man staying out of a gang. 5. Men like to fight because thats just who they are. Ricardo Preunit answer: Yes Reason: Were stronger than girls so we have to do the fighting. Postunit answer: No Reason: We have control of what we do. 6. Guys who go to prison are real men. James Preunit answer: Unsure Reason: If you dont want to get killed there you better be a man. Postunit answer: No Reason: Prison aint no place to prove youre a man. 7. If a man killed someone, other men would think he was really cool. Dewayne Preunit answer: Yes Reason: My uncle knows this guy who was in prison because he killed someone and he thinks hes cool. Postunit answer: No Reason: That dont sound cool to me. 8. Real men protect their families by fighting. Shantala Preunit answer: Yes Reason: Where I live you got to fight because people always messing with you. Postunit answer: No Reason: You protect them better by having a good job and a good house. 9. As soon as a boy turns 13 he needs a gun. Ricardo Preunit answer: Yes Reason: People know your serious with a gun. Postunit answer: No Reason: A boy only needs a gun for hunting. 10. Sometimes being violent is the only way for a man to make others understand he means business. James Preunit answer: Yes Reason: Ive seen it. Postunit answer: No Reason: There are other ways, like what you say that lets people know you aint messing.

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Real Men and our hope for real boys and girls
While the unit ended officially from an instructional standpoint, the three of us still had some work to do. It was now time to readminister the survey given students 2 months earlier to determine if any self-reported changes in attitude toward stereotypical violent male behavior had occurred. Demonstrating changes in students attitudes based on the Real Men unit using self-report measures has its origin in research like that conducted by Farrell and Meyer (1997), who examined the effects of a school-based curriculum designed to reduce violence among sixth-grade students from inner-city Richmond. In that study, students completed a survey at the beginning of the school year reporting the number of incidences of assaultive violence they had instigated. At the conclusion of the violence-prevention program, the survey was readministered. Though the program had only 18 sessions, results were significant. Boys reported a reduction in the frequency of violence and several other related problem behaviors, and most of these differences were maintained through the end of the school year. We were heartened after reading our students responses to the pre- and postunit survey (sample responses to individual items by the four students we have highlighted in this article appear in the Figure); although it is impossible to know whether their responses reflected a genuine change in attitude or a desire to tell us what we wanted to hear. What would be significant is if someday in the future we reestablished contact with one of them, perhaps James or Ricardo, and he had good news about his circumstances, about the choices he had made, about how he kept out of trouble, stayed the course in school, and acknowledged the contribution to his life our instruction had on him. Far more likely, however, we will go on with our hopes for these young men and women, knowing we tried in those brief 8 weeks to shift their thinking away from the inevitability of male violence and toward a vision of alternative ways of being a real man.

REFERENCES
Alvermann, D., & Hagood, M. (2000). Fandom and critical media literacy. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 43, 436446. Brozo, W.G., & Schmelzer, R.V. (1997). Wildmen, warriors, and lovers: Reaching boys through archetypal literature. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 41, 411. Campbell, A., Muncer, S., Guy, A., & Banim, M. (1996). Social representations of aggression: Crossing the sex barrier. European Journal of Social Psychology, 26, 135147. Davis, T., Byrd, R., Arnold, C., Auinger, P., & Bocchini, J. (1999). Low literacy and violence among adolescents in a summer sports program. Journal of Adolescent Health, 24, 403411. Farrell, A.D., & Meyer, A.L. (1997). The effectiveness of a school-based curriculum for reducing violence among urban sixth-grade students. The American Journal of Public Health, 87, 979984. Garbarino, J. (1999). Lost boys: Why our sons turn violent and how we can save them. New York: The Free Press. Grossman, D., & Degaetano, G. (1999). Stop teaching our kids to kill: A call to action against TV, movie and video game violence. New York: Random House. Harris, I.M. (1994). Men as standard bearers. The Journal of Mens Studies, 3, 103125. Kelly, P.T. (1996). Television violence: A guide to the literature. Washington, DC: Nova Science Publishers. King, M.L., Jr. (1963). Letter from a Birmingham jail. In A. Eastman, C. Blake, H. English, A. Howes, R. Lenaghan, L. McNamara, & J. Rosier (Eds.), The Norton reader: An anthology of expository prose (3rd ed., pp. 660674). New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Kipnis, A. (1994). Men, movies, and monsters: Heroic masculinity as a crucible of male violence. Psychological Perspectives, 29, 3851. Luke, A. (1999). Media literacy and cultural studies in Australia. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 42, 622626. Martino, W. (1999). Cool boys, party animals, squids and poofters: Interrogating the dynamics and politics of adolescent masculinities in school. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 20, 239263. Massinger, P. (1910). A new way to pay old debts. In C. Eliot (Ed.), Elizabethan drama (pp. 859943). New York: P.F. Collier & Sons. Miedzian, M. (1991). Boys will be boys: Breaking the link between masculinity and violence. New York: Doubleday. Myers, W.D. (1988). Scorpions. New York: HarperTrophy. ONeil, J., Helms, B., & Gable, R. (1986). College mens fear of femininity. Sex Roles, 14, 335350. Quesada, A., Miller, E., & Armstrong, S. (2000). The media literacy imperative. Technology and Learning, 21, 4954. Taylor, D. (1997). Many families, many literacies. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Weisfeld, G. (1994). Aggression and dominance in the social world of boys. In J. Archer (Ed.), Male violence. (pp. 8197) London: Routledge.

Brozo teaches at the University of Tennessee (A221 Claxton Complex, College of Education, Knoxville, TN 37919, USA). He may be reached via e-mail at wbrozo@utk.edu. Walter and Placker are teachers in Corpus Christi, Texas.

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