One of the FX network’s most successful original productions, Sons of Anarchy roared onto the scene in September 2008 and dominated FX’s programming for seven seasons. Following an eponymous outlaw motorcycle club on its Shakespearean journey, Sons of Anarchy took its audience on a wild ride powered by a high-octane brand of masculinity so potent the fumes virtually seeped through the screen.

The masculinity on display in Sons of Anarchy is complex, complicated, and in many ways problematic, both within the story and as a text. Kurt Sutter, series creator, writer, and showrunner, depicts male characters who wear their manliness on their backs and act first from their steel-clad, highly traditional sense of what it means to be a man. The show both vaunts that sense of masculinity and challenges it, leaving characters and audience alike to grapple with the implications and consequences an outlaw biker’s ride-or-die life. This collection includes a robust array of scholarly perspectives on Sons of Anarchy’s complicated presentation of masculinity and the cultural implications thereof.