Michael A Messner

I taught sociology and gender studies courses starting 1976—for the first decade at four community colleges, an Air Force base, three California State Universities, and a maximum security prison—and settled into my position in the sociology department and gender studies program at the University of Southern California in 1987.

My teaching and research were sparked and continue to be animated by the movements for social justice that erupted in the 1960s, 1970s and beyond, especially feminism. The women’s movement shook up the world, disrupted taken-for-granted assumptions about nature, difference, and inequality, and ultimately raised “the man question.” I was in on the ground floor of a first generation of scholars who studied men’s lives within an emergent interdisciplinary field—women’s and gender studies—and a vibrant sub-field within sociology.

In the broadest sense, my research asks how social relations of gender have changed over the past forty years, and probes the ways in which the strains and tensions of the current historical moment both prevent and make possible future progressive change. There are many potential sites where one might study these big questions. My research has fallen into four general categories: (1) gender and sport; (2) sports media; and (3) men, feminism and politics, (4) war and peace.