Gulick, Luther Halsey

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McElvaine, Robert S. The Great Depression: America, 1 929-1 941 . New York: Times Books, 1 984.

Pendergast, Tom. Creating the Modern Man. American Magazines and Consumer Culture, 1 900-1 950. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000.

GULICK, LUTHER HALSEY

1 865-19 1 8

Physical Educator and Author

Luther Halsey Gulick contributed to the field of physical education and helped redefine middle-class manhood dur ing the Progressive Era ( 1 890- 1 9 1 5 ) . Born into a family of Congregational ministers, Gulick devoted his life to promot ing and intertwining physical education and male spirituality. Gulick held several influential positions in the field of physical education. He headed the gymnasium department at the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts ( 1887-1900) ; served as director of physical education in the public schools of New York City ( 1903-08); held the presidencies of the American Physical Education Association ( 1 903-06) and the Public

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School Physical Training Society ( 1905-08); and cofounded the Playground Association of America with educator Joseph Lee in 1 906 (and served as its first president).

Central to Gulick's thinking on masculinity and physical education were the concept of organic memory and the so called recapitulation theory of play. According to the concept of organic memory, each individual inherits the history of his or her own race. Gulick asserted that only white men have the ability to fully establish control of mind over body. According to recapitulation theory, as a child grows to maturity it relives past stages of evolution, moving from primitive forms of behavior to civilized forms of social organization by learning to take control of the atavistic layers of its personality.

Central to the concepts of white manhood in the early twentieth century was the ability to shape this civilized self-pos session during a child's adolescent years. Proponents of recapit ulation theory argued that manhood could be shaped through physical exercise. Gulick believed that training the body's motor reflexes and subjecting them to conscious control of the mind would build the necessary moral reflexes of an individual.

Gulick shared the definition of manhood and the con cerns with the male physique espoused by advocates of the "strenuous life," but he rejected an exclusive emphasis on the body as a symbol of self-confident manliness. Achieving man hood, Gulick believed, required not simply muscle building, but a symmetrical development of body, mind, and spirit-as represented by the inverted red triangle that he persuaded the YMCA to adopt as its symbol in 1891. Gulick favored team sports such as basketball and volleyball because they promoted the moral principles of loyalty, self-control, self-sacrifice, and teamwork, which he considered to be the foundations of Christianity and an altruistic Christian manhood.

Although Gulick advocated a "muscular Christianity" that emphasized a greater balance between body and spirit, his emphasis on making the male physique an expression of Christian manhood ultimately led him to place sexuality and sexual difference at the center of male gender identity. In The Dynamic of Manhood ( 1 9 1 8 ) , Gulick followed a path charted earlier by his friend Granville Stanley Hall and urged men to channel their sexual impulses and reproduc tive energies into emotional expressions as a part of their outwardly directed, embodied selves. Gulick's prescription for establishing manliness by externalizing physical desires and functions contributed to the cultural separation of sex uality from reproduction.

Gulick made lasting contributions to ideas about mas culinity and physical exercise. His ideas about manhood con tributed to a body-centered definition of male gender identity.

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GULICK, LUTHER HALSEY

He also helped to pioneer calisthenics, an early form of aero bics, and each year the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance awards a medal in his name to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the field of physical education.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dorgan, Ethel Josephine. Luther Halsey Gulick, 1 865-1 918. New York: Bureau of Publications, Teacher's College, Columbia University, 1 934.

Gustav-Wrathall, John D. Take The Young Stranger By The Hand: Same-Sex Relations and the YMCA. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1 998.

Hopkins, C. Howard. History of the Y.M. G.A. in North America. New York: Association Press, 1 95 1 .

Rader, Benjamin G . "The Recapitulation Theory of Play: Motor Behaviour, Moral Reflexes, and Manly Attitudes in Urban America, 1 880-1 920." In Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1 800-1 940, edited by J. A. Mangan and James Walvin. New York: St. Martin's, 1 987. FURTHER READING

Putney, Clifford Wallace. Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1 880-1920. Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 200 1 .

Tomko, Linda J . "Fete Accompli: Gender, 'Folk Dance; and Progressive Era Political Ideals in New York City." In

Corporealities: Dancing, Knowledge, Culture and Power, edited by Susan Leigh Foster. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Wallach, Stephanie. "Luther Halsey Gulick and the Salvation of the American Adolescent." Ph.D. Diss., Columbia University, New York, 1989.

Winter, Thomas. '''The Healthful Art of Dancing': Luther Halsey Gulick, Gender, the Body, and the Performativity of National Identity." Journal of American Culture 22 (Summer 1999): 33-38.

SELECTED WRITINGS

Gulick, Luther Halsey. The Efficient Life. New York: Doubleday, Page, 1 907.

---. Mind and Work. New York: Doubleday, Page, 1909. ---. The Dynamic of Manhood. New York: Association Press,

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---. A Philosophy of Play. New York: Scribners, 1 920.

RELATED ENTRIES

Body; Bodybuilding; Boy Scouts of America; Darwinism; Hall, Granville Stanley; Health; Heterosexuality; Middle-Class Manhood; Muscular

Christianity; Progressive Era; Race; Religion and Spirituality; Sports; Victorian Era; Whiteness; Young Men's Christian Association; Youth

-Thomas Winter

GUNS

Guns were considered a necessity in settling the American frontier during the colonial era, for they provided personal and familial protection and enabled colonists to kill game for survival. In the twenty-first century, guns remain central to popular images of the self-sufficient pioneer and mythic gun fighter, and they are an essential tool of film and television heroes. American men, in particular, are associated with guns, which they have used to assert their power and dominate peo ple in warfare, law enforcement, and personal conflicts.

Although there is some controversy regarding the devel opment of America's gun culture, it is generally believed that guns were essential to notions of republican manhood and an emerging national identity in Revolutionary America. The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution granted citizens "the right . . . to keep and bear arms." The associa tion of guns with a manly defense of liberty was apparent in Ralph Waldo Emerson's poetic celebration, in his "Concord Hymn," of the embattled farmers who began the American Revolution with "the shot heard round the world." This association between guns, Americanism, and manliness was reinforced by subsequent wars.

Guns became particularly important to southern ideals of manhood. After the French and Indian War ( 1 754-63), colonists, especially in the South, adopted from French and British aristo crats the tradition of dueling, which was part of a code of manly honor that demanded ritualized combat between two equals when one had questioned the integrity of the other. At the same time, southern white men were particularly troubled by the pos sibility that black men might use guns to challenge a social sys tem grounded in white patriarchy, racial hierarchy, and paternalism. As early as 1 640, laws were passed making it illegal for African Americans to carry weapons. After the Civil War, Southern states passed the "Black Codes:' which included provi sions denying former slaves the right to own weapons.

During the antebellum period, burgeoning firearms man ufacturers like Samuel Colt helped bolster the nation's gun culture by making guns affordable, accurate, and durable. Inspired by Unionist shooting enthusiasts, rifle shooting became such a popular sport after the Civil War that the mem bers of the National Guard formed the National Rifle Association (NRA) in 1 87 1 to advance the sport. Membership