Paperback : $59.95
Who is called "emotional"? And what does it mean? How do we know that a person is "speaking from the heart"? The prevailing stereotype is that she is emotional, while he is not. In Speaking From the Heart, Stephanie 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 she exposes the historically shifting and tacit assumptions these beliefs are based on. Everything from nineteenth century ideals of womanhood, to baseball and the new man is considered in the context of how emotion effects our everyday lives. Shields argues that the question of anger is the fundamental paradox in the emotional female/unemotional male stereotype: the stereotype of emotionality is female, but the stereotype of anger, a prototypic emotion, is male. Why is it that anger, which is so often portrayed as childish (peevish, irritable, testy, sullen, cranky, touchy, irked), and the essence of the apparently uncontrollable, irrational character of emotion, is masculine? Is there a difference (either conceptually or behaviorally) between masculine anger and the anger of immature tantrums? Is anger, in fact, viewed as emotionality when displayed or experienced by adult men? Stephanie A. Shields is Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. She served as Director of Women's Studies at the University of California, Davis and more recently at Penn State. Her research and numerous articles address the intersection of the psychology of emotion, the psychology of gender and feminist psychology. This is her first book.
Show moreWho is called "emotional"? And what does it mean? How do we know that a person is "speaking from the heart"? The prevailing stereotype is that she is emotional, while he is not. In Speaking From the Heart, Stephanie 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 she exposes the historically shifting and tacit assumptions these beliefs are based on. Everything from nineteenth century ideals of womanhood, to baseball and the new man is considered in the context of how emotion effects our everyday lives. Shields argues that the question of anger is the fundamental paradox in the emotional female/unemotional male stereotype: the stereotype of emotionality is female, but the stereotype of anger, a prototypic emotion, is male. Why is it that anger, which is so often portrayed as childish (peevish, irritable, testy, sullen, cranky, touchy, irked), and the essence of the apparently uncontrollable, irrational character of emotion, is masculine? Is there a difference (either conceptually or behaviorally) between masculine anger and the anger of immature tantrums? Is anger, in fact, viewed as emotionality when displayed or experienced by adult men? Stephanie A. Shields is Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. She served as Director of Women's Studies at the University of California, Davis and more recently at Penn State. Her research and numerous articles address the intersection of the psychology of emotion, the psychology of gender and feminist psychology. This is her first book.
Show morePreface; 1. That 'vivid, unforgettable condition'; 2. When does gender matter?; 3. Doing emotion/doing gender: practising in order to 'get it right'; 4. Sentiment, sympathy, and passion in the late nineteenth century; 5. The education of the emotions; 6. Ideal emotion and the fallacy of the inexpressive male; 7. Emotional = female; angry = male?; 8. Speaking from the heart; References; Index.
Explores gender and emotion drawing on examples from everyday life, contemporary culture and comprehensive research.
Stephanie A. Shields is Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at Pennsylvania State University. She has been Director of Women's Studies both at the University of California, Davis, and at Pennsylvania State University, and was founding director of the Consortium for Women and Research at UCD. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and of the American Psychological Society and a charter member of the International Society for Research on Emotions. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on human emotion, the psychology of gendeR, and women in American Psychology. This is her first single-authored book.
'This is an extraordinarily well-written book. My belief is that undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars working in the area of gender, emotion, and identity will definitely feel intellectually enriched after reading this book. ... excellent interdisciplinary scholarship, intelligent theoretical analyses, and lucid writing make this book an important piece of scholarly work in the field of psychology and related disciplines.' Sex Roles 'Perceiving a gaping hole in the psychological study of emotion, which has largely ignored gender issues, Shields moves beyond a purely descriptive account of gender differences and toward a theoretical explanation for how and why emotion is inextricably intertwined with conceptions of femininity and masculinity. Her approach is unabashedly feminist and social constructivist, which will please many but rile others ... Shields presents a persuasive case for the dual social construction of gender and emotional expressivity. Regardless of one's theoretical perspective, this book is important and recommended for lower- and upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers interested in the study of emotion.' R. Compton, Haverford College 'The book is particularly impressive in its accessible and engaging style, with its ample use of 'real life' examples ... which makes for stimulating and enjoyable reading. while researchers in the area of emotion and gender, across the disciplines of psychology, gender studies and others, will find it a comprehensive and valuable text, it is arguably also an appropriate resource for post-graduate teaching.' South African Journal of Psychology
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
