Maritime Toxic Masculinity conference: on now & forever. Listen in!

This Global Maritime History conference, in which I am a speaker, is deeply innovative in two ways:  

1. Topic. Historians have been discussing maritime masculinities for several years now. But to take the bull by the horns and discuss toxicity in this context is really daring and fresh in intent.  
2. Form. This is digital conference. Although it was ‘held’, as it were on 26 April 2019, all the papers are available to any 'attendee', any time, anywhere. Entrance is free. No travel costs are incurred so you don't have the hassle of finding a sponsor for your air fares and pizza.  

Participation is virtual. This means no jet-legged late-arriving participant need miss out. Panel-hoppers avid for everything can have their dreams met. Here there are no such obstacles as timetable clashes. Listen when you want, how you want.

Never too late.
 Image by Jing Jing Tsong

As long as the website is up, you can 'attend'. 

And there's infinite room for comments and questions. So just metaphorically 'put up your hand, then get to your feet' and join in, via your keyboard. The responses you get, of course, are not instantaneous. 

Finding your way around

All the papers are spoken and some are visual too. The abstracts are available as written text. There are no chairpersons. Everyone introduces themselves and their biographies are also available in written form in the conference’s ‘provisional' programme which is actually final and complete: https://globalmaritimehistory.com/maritime-toxic-masculinity-conference-provisional-programme/

You have to scroll down to the bottom of that website, to 'Recent Posts', to find links to all the full papers. Most of them are in Powerpoint 2016 form. The links all work.

I am attaching a summary of the conference here, as I thought others might find the website a puzzling one to negotiate, as well as to find as a whole if browsing You yourself can help raise the conference profile by tweeting etc.

If you want to go direct to my paper, on women, here's the link to that panel. Mine is item two: https://globalmaritimehistory.com/gender-sexuality/

And here below is an outline of the entire conference. It has no keynote or plenary speeches, by the way. Just 4 panels.

Panel 1: Hostility: Masculine Violence and Xenophobia

• Ankita Das: “War, Travel, and the Turmoiled Self: Narrative of an Odia Soldier”
• Dr. Johnathan Thayer: “Andrew Furuseth, the International Seamen’s Union, and the Political Ideology of Maritime Masculinity”
• Harry Brennan: “Masculine Violence in the lives of John Cremer (1700-1774) and William Byrd II (1674-1744)”

 Panel 2: Toxic Masculinity in Literature and Song

• Dr. Kelly MacPhail: “‘The horror of the race’: W.C. Williams’ ‘The Yachts’ and the 1934 America’s Cup”
• Dr. Jessica Floyd: “Shaping a Hyper-Masculine Sailing Identity: Sex, Violence, and Otherness in Examples of “Blow the Man Down” Located in the James Madison Carpenter Collection”
• Dr. Joshua M. Smith: “Those human seraphim, the sailors”: Beatnik Merchant Seamen, 1942-1965  

  

  1980s UK navy women say no to unwanted
  sexual attention - and it was seen as worthy
  of a cartoon. Image by Jim Swift, courtesy of
  Navy Books.

Panel 3: Gender and Sexuality

• Mitch Gould: “Sailors: the Wheels on Melville’s Coach” 
• Dr Jo Stanley:  “#MeToo and mar hist: Tackling the silences about women’s subjective sexualities in maritime histories”
• Meaghan Walker: “The Issuing of Such Coarse Stuff to the People”: What the Contents of the British Tender Diligent Reveal about Gendered Relationships and Labour, Clothing Systems, and Imperial Power, 1804 

Panel 4: The Docks: Semiotic Examination of Masculinity and Sexual Constructs Surrounding the Lone Sailor 

• Steven Dashiell (lead organizer)
• Dorian Alexander 
• Kyle Shupe
• Angus Henderson

Do join in the discussions! This has got to be the most accessible maritime history conference yet