American Girl: The Iconographies of Helen Wills

The 'American Girl' this paper considers is Helen Wills, the top-ranked women’s tennis player from 1927 to 1934. Wills was the subject of numerous narrative and visual representations as well as many self-representations in both words and images. Reading Wills in the context of Henry James's Daisy Miller and the popular magazine Gibson Girl, the paper considers the mechanisms by which national symbols are constructed. In particular, it examines the ways in which Wills's style of playing, her clothes, and even her facial expression came to signify a particular version of modern, American femininity (in contrast to that of opponents such as Suzanne Lenglen and Helen Jacobs). It also explores her identity as a white Californian, a neo-classical girl next door, who appealed to Nativists like James Phelan and Gertrude Atherton and whom Diego Rivera placed at the centre of 1931 Allegory of California. In short, Helen Wills proved both a very flexible American symbol and a global celebrit

American Girl: The Iconographies of Helen Wills

The 'American Girl' this paper considers is Helen Wills, the top-ranked women’s tennis player from 1927 to 1934. Wills was the subject of numerous narrative and visual representations as well as many self-representations in both words and images. Reading Wills in the context of Henry James's Daisy Miller and the popular magazine Gibson Girl, the paper considers the mechanisms by which national symbols are constructed. In particular, it examines the ways in which Wills's style of playing, her clothes, and even her facial expression came to signify a particular version of modern, American femininity (in contrast to that of opponents such as Suzanne Lenglen and Helen Jacobs). It also explores her identity as a white Californian, a neo-classical girl next door, who appealed to Nativists like James Phelan and Gertrude Atherton and whom Diego Rivera placed at the centre of 1931 Allegory of California. In short, Helen Wills proved both a very flexible American symbol and a global celebrity

"Fighting Words": Ralph Ellison and Len Zinberg

A study of the intertextual relationship between Ralph Ellison's _Invisble Man_ and Len Zinberg's lesser known novel _Walk Hard--Talk Loud_ in the context of ethnic working class boxing and Popular Front approaches to sports

“No Stropping, No Honing”: Modernism’s Safety Razors

“No Stropping, No Honing”: Modernism’s Safety Razor

The tyranny of the male preserve

Within this paper I draw on short vignettes and quotes taken from a two-year ethnographic study of boxing to think through the continuing academic merit of the notion of the male preserve. This is an important task due to evidence of shifts in social patterns of gender that have developed since the idea was first proposed in the 1970s. In aligning theoretical contributions from Lefebvre and Butler to discussions of the male preserve, we are able to add nuance to our understanding of how such social spaces are engrained with and produced by the lingering grasp of patriarchal narratives. In particular, by situating the male preserve within shifting social processes, whereby certain men’s power is increasingly undermined, I highlight the production of space within which narratives connecting men to violence, aggression and physical power can be consumed, performed and reified in a relatively unrestricted form. This specific case study contributes to gender theory as an illustration of a way in which we might explore and understand social enclaves where certain people are able to lay claim to space and power. As such, I argue that the notion of the male preserve is still a useful conceptual, theoretical and political device especially when considered as produced by the tyranny of gender power through the dramatic representation and reification of behaviours symbolically linked to patriarchal narrations of manhood

Athletic Mobility

Opierając się na książce Black Men Can’t Shoot (Czarni nie umieją rzucać) Scotta N. Brooksa, wydanej w roku 2008 roku etnograficznej analizie akademickich drużyn koszykarskich w Filadelfii, autorka artykułu zestawia ze sobą koncepcje pracy i talentu jako źródła sportowego sukcesu uznawane zazwyczaj za niewspółmierne. Autor komentowanej przez nią książki dekonstruuje mit wrodzonego i zależnego m.in. od rasy talentu predysponującego do uprawiania jakiejś dyscypliny (tu: koszykówki) i dochodzi do wniosku, że nawet na poziomie amatorskim sukces zależy raczej od sposobu alokacji cielesnych zasobów – zarządzania siłami zawodnika, możliwości nawiązywania biznesowych kontaktów itp. – niż od umiejętności, finezji czy stylu gry.This essay considers the competing ideologies of hard work and natural talent when talking about sporting greatness. Dispelling the myth of the “racial gift” is one of the aims of Scott N. Brooks’s 2008 ethnography, Black Men Can’t Shoot, a study of Philadelphia high school basketball that suggests athletic mobility has more to do with mentoring and networking than skill, aesthetics or self-expression