When Frederick Jackson Turner declared the closure of the frontier in 1893, he not only established the American frontier as shaping American history but also understandings of American manhood/masculinity. Though the frontier as Turner characterized it ceased to exist going into the twentieth century, that characterization of masculinity lingered in American culture in general and popular culture more specifically. Though some scholars have sought to distance superhero comics from a basis in the frontier, there is no denying the ways in which the superhero is steeped in these hegemonic ideas of what makes “a man” and thus part of their continuation. One series that makes this clear is Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Hawkeye. Through how both protagonists—Hawkeye/Clint Barton and Hawkeye/Kate Bishop—differently embody the characteristics identified as stemming from the frontier experience, the series simultaneously reveals the operation of this hegemonic masculinity but also problematizes the ways in which it can function invisibly in comics and popular culture.
About the presenterPatrick Hamilton
Dr. Patrick Hamilton is a professor of English at Misericordia University, specializing in U.S. multi-ethnic literature and popular culture. His book, Of Space & Mind: Cognitive Mappings of Contemporary Chicano/a Fiction was published in 2011 by University of Texas Press. He and Dr. Allan Austin of co-wrote All-New, All-Different?: A History of Race and the American Superhero (2019, University of Texas Press) and received the PCA’s 2020 John G. Cawelti Award for Best Textbook/Primer.