Masculine Gestures: On Imitation and Initiation in Modernism explores tropes of social initiation and gender imitation in American literature and film between 1915 and 1940. I focus specifically on sites where a complex negotiation of gender identity and Americanness is undergone— the boxing ring, the battlefield, the city, and the rural south— in order to trace the way men’s embodiment was figured in response to fears that masculinity itself was in crisis.