Lecture Lecture Series – Theo Sonnekus

– PUBLIC LECTURE SERIES –

The Research and Collections Department invites you to 2025’s Lecture Lecture programme, a series of online seminars, hosted every second Tuesday FOR our staff BY our staff. This is an opportunity for you to present an extract from anything you may currently be researching, with the intention to influence and inspire one another, spark dialogue, and receive constructive feedback.

Theo Sonnekus: “Jock and the Great Outdoors”: White American Masculinities, Gay Reader-Tourists, and Fantasies of Africa in Postwar Physique Magazines

Drawing from a selection of images by the South African photographer Jock, this article explores the historical construction of exotic white masculinities in postwar physique magazines. Read against the backdrop of the perceived emasculation of

American men in the mid-twentieth century, I propose that primitivist notions of Africa as the ultimate rural setting for the rehabilitation of white masculinity were appropriated in physique titles to appeal to gay reader-tourists in the US.

MEETING LINK: meet.google.com/tuv-rkas-ksg 

View our PROGRAMME HANDBOOK to find out more.