Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"This fresh analysis...is important for anyone interested in gender or emotion, in the past or present." Susan J. Matt, Weber State University, Journal of Social History"[A]n engaging, illuminating, and panoramic book. Speaking from the Heart is filled with provocative insights." American Journal of Sociology"This is an extraordinarily well-written 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"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 sudents, and researchers interested in the study of emotion." Choice"One doesn't often come upon this type of scholarly book. Stephanie Shields has succeeded in writing a book that is intellectually challenging, refreshing and inspiring...[A] fantastic book that I would like to recommend strongly to anyone interested in emotion, in gender, or both." Psychology of Women Quarterly
Synopsis
In Speaking From the Heart Professor Shields draws on examples from everyday life, contemporary culture and the latest research, to reveal how culturally shared beliefs about emotion shape our identities as women and men. This fascinating exploration of gender and emotion shows how emotion affects our everyday lives.
Table of Contents
1. That âvivid, unforgettable conditionâ; 2. When does gender matter?; 3. Doing emotion/doing gender: practising in order to âget it rightâ; 4. Sentiment, sympathy, and passion in the late 19th 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.