Shrove Tuesday - 8 March 2011


Taking the Sting out of the Ring
Masculinity and White-Collar Boxing
Allen Frantzen, Loyola University
Tuesday, March 8 , 5:30-8:30pm
19 South Wabash, 2d floor

SMACK IN THE MIDDLE OF CHICAGO'S GOLDEN GLOVES TOURNAMENT, Allen Frantzen will join the Cigar Society to talk about White Collar Boxing---a fairly new branch of amateur boxing that is adjusted to the capabilities of those 40 and up.  Some of the adjustments reduce the physical risks, while others are meant to lessen the psychological blows that come with training for and performing in the ring.  Boxing, Frantzen believes, puts the spotlight on masculinity, stripping conflict and competition to the bare essentials.   White collar boxing brings the challenges of the one-on-one fight to age groups and professional circles in which violence is usually only verbal.  White collar boxing is a way for mature men to think about competition, strength, and what it means to fight.

Allen Frantzen is the author of Bloody Good: Chivalry, Sacrifice, and the Great War (University of Chicago Press, 2004), which examines martyrdom and heroic masculinity in manuals of chivalry and explores the incorporation of chivalric images and icons into posters, postcards, and memorials from the Great War.  Creative projects related to his work on the war include lyrics for a song cycle called Circles of Grief, with music by the French composer Pierre Thilloy, that was performed in France on Veterans Day in 2005, and a play called A Son at the Front, based on a novel by Edith Wharton, that he produced at the Athanaeum Theater in 2009.  Professor Frantzen teaches English at Loyola University Chicago and is founding director of the Loyola Community Literacy Center. He received his PhD from the University of Virginia and taught at Oberlin College before coming to Loyola University in 1978.  He has held fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.


$40 includes drinks, two cigars, and sandwiches.  Jacket and tie recommended.
Reservations are required.

Coming up

Tuesday, March 22
Augustus Higginson, The Rise of the Skyscraper in Chicago: 1955 to the present.
19 S. Wabash, 2d floor.

Tuesday, April 5
Tony Grosch, The Ideal of Brotherhood in Four Classic Chicago Novels in the '30s and '40s.
19 S. Wabash, 2d floor.

Tuesday, April 12
Lauren Viera, New Cocktails for Spring: A Lesson in Mixology.
19 S. Wabash, 2d floor.

Tuesday, April 26
Michael Turner, God, the Multiverse, and Cosmic Arrogance.
19 S. Wabash, 2d floor.

Tuesday, May 10
Robert Wallace, Why did the Athenians Kill Socrates?
19 S. Wabash, 2d floor.

Tuesday, May 24
Alfred Rasho, Making Short Documentary Films.
19 S. Wabash, 2d floor.

 

 


About the Cigar Society of Chicago

ONE OF THE OLDEST AND greatest traditions of the city clubs of Chicago is the discussion of intellectual, social, legal, artistic, historical, scientific, musical, theatrical, and philosophical issues in the company of educated, bright, and appropriately provocative individuals, all under the beneficent influence of substantial amounts of tobacco and spirits.  The Cigar Society of Chicago embraces this tradition and extends it with its Informal Smokers, University Series lectures, and Cigar Society Dinners, in which cigars, and from time to time pipes and cigarettes, appear as an important component of our version of the classical symposium.  To be included in the Cigar Society's mailing list, write to the Secretary at CigarSociety@logicophilosophicus.org.