Best known as the story from the 1904 Puccini opera, the compelling modern myth of Madame Butterfly has been read, watched, and re-interpreted for over a century, from Pierre Loti's 1887 novel Madame Chrysantheme to A.R. Gurney's 1999 play Far East. This fascinating collaborative volume examines the Madame Butterfly narrative in a wide variety of cultural contexts - literary, musical, theatrical, cinematic, historical, and political - and in a variety of media - opera, drama, film, and prose narratives - and includes contributions from a wide range of academic disciplines, such as Asian Studies, English Literature, Theatre, Musicology, and Film Studies. From its original colonial beginnings, the Butterfly story has been turned about and inverted in recent years to shed light back on the nature of the relationship between East and West, remaining popular in its original version as well as in retellings such as David Henry Hwang's play M. Butterfly and David Cronenberg's screen adaptation. The combined perspectives that result from this collaboration provide new and challenging insights into the powerful, resonant myth of a painful encounter between East and West.

Painting the Maple explores the critical interplay of raceand gender in shaping Canadian culture, history, politics and healthcare. These interdisciplinary essays draw on feminist, postcolonial,and critical theory in a wide-ranging discussion that encompasses bothhigh and popular forms of culture, the deliberation of policy and itsexecution, and social movements as well as individual authors andtexts. The contributors establish connections among discourses of race,gender, and nation-building that have conditioned the formation ofCanada for more than one hundred years. At times provocative,Painting the Maple illuminates the challenges that lie aheadfor all Canadians who aspire to create a better future in a reimaginednation.

Painting the Maple explores the critical interplay of raceand gender in shaping Canadian culture, history, politics and healthcare. These interdisciplinary essays draw on feminist, postcolonial,and critical theory in a wide-ranging discussion that encompasses bothhigh and popular forms of culture, the deliberation of policy and itsexecution, and social movements as well as individual authors andtexts. The contributors establish connections among discourses of race,gender, and nation-building that have conditioned the formation ofCanada for more than one hundred years. At times provocative,Painting the Maple illuminates the challenges that lie aheadfor all Canadians who aspire to create a better future in a reimaginednation.