Focuses the lenses of feminist analysis on critical cultural audience studies. Hoover and Coats's research is deeply invested in the work accomplished at the nexus of media, religion, and gender, most specifically examining the shape of twenty-first-century white, middle-class, heterosexual American masculinities. In this illuminating book, media and religion coexist as alternative and intersecting symbolic worlds. They contribute to the ... Read moreconstruction of a contemporary 'elemental' masculinity that elicits and deploys commitments to vocations of 'provision, protection, and purpose.' This is a model volume with important and surprising conclusions! -Sally M. Promey,Yale University Over the past two centuries men in the United States have bemoaned the decline of virility, singling out as the root cause such deep shifts as the expansion of urban life, the loss of agrarian values, the closing of the frontier, the rise of women's rights, and the decline of the traditional family. Hoover and Coats show us that the tradition of the manly jeremiad continues today, taking shape in the broadly influential media that touch the hopes, dreams, memories, and fears of fathers and sons holed up in the sanctum of what the authors calls 'the domestic ideal.' The interviews they undertake demonstrate that religion is not merely a source of traditional values, ballast against the storm on conventional gender roles. It can also generate ambivalence about traditional constructions of gender. And media, for their part, are variously regarded as cause of moral decay and beloved source of gender ideals. There is much to learn from this clear, well-informed account of white male, mediated religious sentiment. -David Morgan,Duke University In this important contribution to scholarship on communication/media and religion, Hoover and Coats report their ongoing research on the intersection of gender, media, and religion against the backdrop of a perceived ongoing crisis of masculinity in contemporary US culture. -Choice Show Less