This post-sabbatical presentation by Bryan Pearce-Gonzales, PhD, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies, will begin at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, February 28, in Brandt Student Center room 118, and is held in conjunction with the 4th Annual Wine, Cheese & Scholarship faculty research symposium. You may attend in person or remotely via Zoom. For remote attendance and event details, please visit the Wine, Cheese & Scholarship Website or email varmagh@su.edu.

Abstract:
Dagoberto Gilb is a prolific author of contemporary Chicana/o novels that center upon male characters navigating through worlds defined and controlled by an overbearing patriarchal social order. Sonny, the protagonist in Gilb’s The Flowers, is a precocious yet misguided adolescent who endeavors to construct a masculinity that contradicts the example set by his step-father. This study aims to explore the idea of the “patriarchal dividend” (the privileged destiny to which every male subject is heir within a patriarchal social order) and to analyze the ways in which Sonny attempts to reject it as the basis on which to conceive of his own masculinity.