Writing the Nation/Reading the Men: Postcolonial Masculinities in Mark's Gospel and the Ancient Novel

This dissertation explores the literary construction of the Markan Jesus as a gendered subject.

It draws principally upon the work of postcolonial theory and masculinity studies to describe the gender of the Markan Jesus as a form of popular, socially marginalized manhood that lacks some of key markers of the hegemonic ideals found in elite Greco-Roman discourses.

Hegemonic, marginalized, and subordinate models of male identity, it argues by drawing on recent historical explorations of gender and empire, are formed in response to Roman imperialism and are visible as such in various cultural products of the imperial period.

Ancient novels, it is increasingly recognized, are important examples of those cultural products and are thus key sites for the construction of collective identities and gendered subjectivities.

This dissertation thus also argues that Mark's gospel should be compared to other examples of ancient novelistic literature, especially those that use national heroes as literary symbols of national identity and experience under colonial rule.

Like other ancient popular narratives, Mark's gospel is engaged in the negotiation of male identity, and the national ideals it could present, under imperial rule.