class. "[B]oth Christian and goth men occupy the paradoxical position of having low status among youth while benefiting from whiteness, middle-class status, and masculinity more generally, all of which are, however, invisible resources." Both the Christians and the Goths "crafted" ways of being masculine from their subcultures "to ameliorate some of the more restrictive expectations of masculinity," e.g., "aggressive heterosexuality. "Both the University Unity and the goth subcultures provide solutions to young men's dilemmas. Evangelical Christianity and goth culture provide them with community, social support, and tools for thinking about themselves differently. Subcultural participants develop meaningful social ties and find people who are familiar with and sympathetic to their experiences. In both subcultures, participants also learn to think about themselves differently, transforming some of the attributes associated with their marginality into subcultural virtues." "The sexual performances of Unity and goth men are distinct, even antithetical, yet each violates dominant notions of young men's sexuality as voracious, resolutely heterosexual, sexually dominant, and emotionally shallow. Unity members are sexually abstinent, whereas goths are sexually exploratory and endorse some forms of queer play. Moreover, both sets of men portray sexuality as emotionally intimate and evince concern for women's emotions." The Christians were abstinent and transformed heterosexual failure into masculine self-control. This requires "temptation talk." The goth scene transforms "conventionally unattractive men into sexually desirable men" and creates "occasions for sexual contact with multiple partners." Both sets of men engage in "intimacy talk," connected to chivalry (Christians) or feminism (Goths) to justify their sexual practices (abstinence or polyamory) and claim "more moral" masculinities. Neither of the gender projects challenge gendered power hierarchies.

Race and class differences in academic and social integration matter for educational success, social mobility, and personal well-being. In this article, I use interview data with students attending predominantly white four-year research universities to investigate the integration experiences of black and first-generation white men. I examine each group’s accounts of both high school and college. Both groups of men reported having positive social experiences in high school. However, while first-generation white men were able to transport their identity strategies to college, the transition to college complicated integration and identities for black men. These processes supported white men’s collegiate goals but undermined black men’s, increasing the emotional costs of college for black men, undermining academic support, and blocking their ability to construct satisfying pathways to adulthood. I argue that identity experiences in high school matter for identity processes in college, where contextual intersectional identity expectations can change in unexpected ways for different groups. More attention is needed to the relationship between precollegiate and collegiate identities and to the ways intersectionality complicates identity processes.

This article uses qualitative data (participant-observation and interviews) to examine happiness talk in a university-based evangelical Christian organization (University Unity). Unity Christians claim that they are happier than non-Christians, but rather than viewing their happiness as a mental health outcome of their participation in a religious organization, I view it as a cultural phenomenon—a way of talking and thinking about their emotions. I show how Unity participants learn to think of themselves as happy, learn to adjust their emotional responses and view their managed emotions as authentic, and learn to link happiness to their moral selves. Unity's emotion work helps participants achieve happiness, but because it also disallows any negative emotions, such happiness is compulsory. One cannot be a Unity Christian if one is not happy. In Unity, then, happiness is a symbolic boundary—participants see themselves as happier (and more authentically so) than others—but this feeling is also material in the crafting of more complex moral boundaries in which happiness is both sign and cause of other kinds of “goodness.” Happiness is an effective boundary not just because Unity Christians themselves want to be happy, but because most members of the middle class want to be happy, and because it builds on broader associations between happiness and morality. Inasmuch as happiness signals morality, unhappiness signals immorality.

In this article, I use in-depth interviews with black university men to investigate race, gender, and emotions. Participation in dominant institutions requires African American men to exhibit extraordinary emotional restraint. Because anger is culturally associated with men, however, black men's suppression of anger violates masculine expectations. Thus, racial subordination not only creates difficult emotional expectations but may also create emotional dilemmas in which expected emotional displays undermine other identity expectations. In this article, I examine both how a group of black university men achieve emotional restraint and how they use their emotions to craft and manage their identities as black middle-class men. I argue that black men distance themselves from the controlling image of the angry black man by developing a shared identity I call moderate blackness. Moderate blackness entails emotional restraint, a moderate approach to campus racial politics, and the ability to get along with white people. These strategies work together to produce positive, restrained emotions and to manage anger and agitation, but they require black university men to "not see" racism. Black men use defensive othering to push the stereotype of the angry black onto black women. In doing so, they shore up their masculinity but leave women responsible for combating racial inequality.

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