Oxbridge Men

<p>The mythic status of the Oxbridge man at the height of the British Empire continues to persist in depictions of this small elite world as an ideal of athleticism intellectualism tradition and ritual. In his investigation of the origins of this myth Paul R. Deslandes explores the everyday life of undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge to examine how they experienced manhood. He considers phenomena such as the dynamics of the junior common room the competition of exams and the social and athletic obligations of intercollegiate boat races to show how rituals activities relationships and discourses all contributed to gender formation. Casting light on the lived experience of undergraduates Oxbridge Men shows how an influential brand of British manliness was embraced altered and occasionally rejected as these students grew from boys into men.</p>