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This special issue of Somatechnics invites contributions concerning medicalized masculinities. We are especially interested in articles with a focus on middle age masculinity and mediatized aspects of masculinities in general including – but not limited to – queer and transgender masculinities and/or racialized masculinities. We consider masculinity as a dynamic and multifaceted phenome- non emerging within cultural, material and discursive frames and contexts and medicalization as technologies of body, gender (and disciplinary power): ways of doing masculinity. The ambition is to grasp and discuss embodied understandings of masculinity connected to both new treatments options and cultural settings as well as men’s changing imaginations about the happy life.

While women and minoritized men long have been the object of scientific research, the focused studying of (white, cis-gender, heterosexual) men and masculinities is a relatively new phenome- non. Also, the mid-age male body, that has until recently escaped regulatory intervention, is increas- ingly being subjected to health and beauty related treatments, interventions and modifications (e.g. rejuvenating products and treatments, medicine, performance enhancing substances, fitness). Thus today, in a Western context, cosmetic surgery has become an acceptable and mainstream tool used to ‘fix’ signs of aging or ‘overweight’ and thereby to achieve a body within the range of what is considered normal and desirable.

We encourage contributions addressing these and related subjects framed within and beyond the conceptual framework of somatechnics. With this special issue we aim to challenge and expand health and social science categorizations and assessments (e.g. body vs. technology, healthy vs. ill, necessary vs. unnecessary as well as artificial vs. natural, body vs. culture) through empirical inves-

tigations and critical cultural analysis. This includes post humanist theories and conceptualizations of the prosthetic, analytical takes on becomings and assemblages, wherein medical interventions in the body are not per se viewed as undesirable, artificial or only physically necessary. Rather, inter- ventions could be understood as continuous hybridization processes, which resolves and exceeds common dichotomist beliefs about the body.

We especially welcome papers on topics such as:

• –  the ways medicalized masculinities are represented in news media, practiced in social me- dia, aestheticized in art
• –  how medicalization challenges queer bodily and gendered taxonomies and binarities
• –  medicalization of /intervention in queer, trans- or/and intersex masculinities
• –  medicalization as part of technologies of racialization
• –  how medicalization transforms or reinstalls hegemonic notions of masculinity
• –  how medicalizations expand or challenge posthumanist theories in relation to e.g. hybridiza- tion, cyborg, and becoming
• –  medicalization of and/or intervention in middle aged masculinity
• –  men’s medicalization and bodily interventions in historical or contemporary societies
• –  histories and genealogies of medicalized masculinitiesSubmit by February 1, 2020 to hvidtfeldt@sdu.dk and nebeling@sdu.dk