Illuminates how one folktale serves as a living record of the evolving cultures and relationships of China and Korea

The Butterfly Lovers Story, sometimes called the Chinese Romeo and Juliet, has been enduringly popular in China and Korea. In Transforming Gender and Emotion, Sookja Cho demonstrates why the Butterfly Lovers Story is more than just a popular love story. By unveiling the complexity of themes and messages concealed beneath the tale’s modern classification as a tragic love story, this book reveals the tale as a rich academic subject for students of human emotions and relationships, comparative geography and culture, and narrative adaptation. By examining folk beliefs and ideas that abound in the narrative—including rebirth and a second life, the association of human souls and butterflies, and women’s spiritual power—this book presents the Butterfly Lovers Story as an example of local religious narrative. The book’s cross-cultural comparisons, best manifested in its discussion of a shamanic ritual narrative version from the Cheju Island of Korea, frame the story as a catalyst for inclusive, expansive discussion of premodern Korean and Chinese literatures and cultures. This scrutiny of the historical and cultural background behind the formation and popularization of the Cheju Island version sheds light on important issues in the Butterfly Lovers Story that are not frequently discussed—either in past examinations of this particular narrative or in the overall literary studies of China and Korea. This new, open approach presents an innovative framework for understanding premodern literary and cultural space in East Asia.

A fascinating exploration of the relationship between gender and emotion.

In Speaking From the Heart Professor Shields uses examples from everyday life, contemporary culture and the latest research, to illustrate how culturally shared beliefs about emotion are used to shape our identities as women and men and exposes the historically shifting and tacit assumptions these beliefs are based on. This fascinating exploration of gender and emotion covers everything from nineteenth century ideals of womanhood, to baseball and the new man and is a must read for anyone interested in the way emotion effects our everyday lives.

Angela Katz-McNair has never felt quite right as a girl, but it’s a shock to everyone when she cuts her hair short, buys some men’s clothes, and announces she’d like to be called by a new name, Grady. Grady is happy about his decision to finally be true to himself, despite the practical complications, like which gym locker room to use. And though he didn’t expect his family and friends to be happy about his decision, he also didn’t expect kids at school to be downright nasty about it. But as the victim of some cruel jokes, Grady also finds unexpected allies in this thought-provoking novel that explores struggles any reader can relate to.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book explores how feelings about gender have changed over three interrelated generations of women and men of different social classes during the twentieth century. The author explores the ways in which generational experiences are connected, what is continued, what triggers gradual or abrupt changes between generations - and between women and men within these generations. The book explores how new feelings of gender gradually change gender norms from within, and how they contribute to the incremental creation of new social practices.​​​ Nielsen suggests a new way of conducting psychosocial research that focuses on generational psychological patterns of gender identities and gendered subjectivities in times of change from a psychoanalytic perspective. Combining generational and longitudinal research, the book works with temporality as a theoretical as well as a methodological dimension. Theoretically it combines Raymond Williams' idea of "a structure of feeling" with the work of Eric Fromm, Hans Loewald, Nancy Chodorow and Jessica Benjamin.

Every day, women face new challenges that come with having control over, and responsibility for, their financial lives. Sometimes exciting, sometimes frightening, these issues always have an emotional side. Author and psychotherapist Dr. Kate Levinson offers fresh approaches to navigating the astonishing range of beliefs about the role of money in our lives, coming to terms with our feelings about being “rich” or “poor,” and exploring our inner money life so that we can put our feelings to work for us in a positive way. By understanding our intimate history and relationship with money we are better able to handle our money anxieties, solve our money problems, enjoy the money we have, and make room for other, more meaningful values.