Male Confessions

Male Confessionsexamines how men open their intimate lives and thoughts to the public through confessional writing. This book examines writingsby St. Augustine, a Jewish ghetto policeman, an imprisoned Nazi perpetrator, and a gay American theologianthat reflect sincere attempts at introspective and retrospective self-investigation, often triggered by some wounding or rupture and followed by a transformative experience. Krondorfer takes seriously the vulnerability exposed in male self-disclosure while offering a critique of the religious and gendered rhetoric employed in such discourse. The religious imagination, he argues, allows men to talk about their intimate, flawed, and sinful selves without having to condemn themselves or to fear self-erasure. Herein lies the greatest promise of these confessions: by baring their souls to judgment, these writers may also transcend their self-imprisonment.

Björn Krondorfer is Professor of Religious Studies at St. Mary's College of Maryland and author of Men and Masculinities in Christianity and Judaism (2009) and Remembrance and Reconciliation: Encounters Between Young Jews and Germans (1995).