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Abstract
This investigation explores how nations are portrayed within the limitations of an international community. Faced with an ever-shrinking world, media in the United States address international political problems through proposals of how to deal with nations and their leaders. Due to theoretical arguments of nations as constructed through differentiating themselves from ideological others, theoretical arguments regarding nations as embedded within transnational cultural, ideological, and economic structures, and evidence that gender is tied to both, this analysis explores how these phenomenon are related through representations of Cuba in United States media. Using all available articles on Cuba in Time and Newsweek from January 1959 - May 2010, the author finds that there are six main themes including (1) Masculinity/Reason (United States), (2) Ineffective Masculinity (Cuba) (3) Complicit Femininity (United States), (4) Failed Femininity (Cuba), (5) International Relations and Nations as Masculine Spaces (Transnational), and (6) Proximally Similar Men and Women (Transnational) for how representations of gender operate in relation to nation and transnational structures. The author finds that intersections of gender and nation may work to both, promote or maintain ideological boundaries or bridge these boundaries.