The Masculine Bee: Gendering Insects in Chinese Imperial-Era Literature

Abstract

<p>Interactions between people and animals are attracting overdue attention in diverse fields of scholarship, yet insects still creep within the shadows of more charismatic birds, fish, and mammals. <em>Insect Histories of East Asia</em> centers on bugs and creepy crawlies and the taxonomies in which they were embedded in China, Japan, and Korea to present a history of human and animal cocreation of habitats in ways that were both deliberate and unwitting. Using sources spanning from the earliest written records into the twentieth century, the contributors draw on a wide range of disciplines to explore the dynamic interaction between the notional insects that infested authors' imaginations and the six-legged creatures buzzing, hopping, and crawling around them.<br></p>