A history of synchronized swimming

In writing my history of synchronized swimming, I was loyal to the canon of historical methodology and theory, I was true to my grounding in classical source use, I was faithful to observing continuity and change, I was conscious of the complex problems concerning truth, relativism, and representation that are entangled in the practices of being a historian. And out of my allegiance to these things, I remembered synchronized swimming, producing what I believe is my finest work in the twentieth century discipline-genre known as "sport history

Social Justice Through Sport and Exercise Studies: A Manifesto

This manifesto reimagines social justice in physical cultural studies by renaming, broadening, and building new characterizations of the body, dis/ability, mental health, exercise, social oppression, and sport. We problematize embedded ‘myths’ in exercise and sports studies scholarship for purposes of informing praxis-based research, and emancipatory practical agendas. These ‘myths’ include the embodied tragedy myth, the myth of bodily control, the sport for peace/development myth, the exercise is medicine myth, the healthism and exercise myth, the compulsory ablemindedness and exercise myth, and the exercise is cost-effective myth. Using intersecting and diverging theories, we propose new ways of knowing these taken for granted notions to springboard a new, socially just, emancipatory approach to research and practice

Online instruction in large scale sport sociology courses: A collective autoethnography

Four instructors reflect on teaching large scale online sport sociology courses at a major Midwestern public research university in the Trump era. We provide an autoethnographic perspective from the perspective of one faculty member, one doctoral candidate, one doctoral student, and one first year doctoral student of some happy surprises as well as major and common pitfalls in attempting to engage and teach undergraduate students in critical analysis of sport through two separate courses with enrollments of 750 each. We also reflect on the role of the institution and the role of the instructor as they complement and contradict each other. This includes our engagement in course group-discussion assignments with students who represent a range of political standpoints and our attempts to support underrepresented students in those class discussions

'Putting up your Dukes': Statues, social memory and Duke Paoa Kahanamoku

Public statues that commemorate the lives and achievements of athletes are pervasive and influential forms of social memory in Western societies. Despite this important nexus between cultural practice and history making, there is a relative void of critical studies of statuary dedicated to athletes. This article will attempt to contribute to a broader understanding in this area by considering a bronze statue of Duke Paoa Kahanamoku, the Hawaiian Olympian, swimmer and surfer, at Waikīkī, Hawaii. This prominent monument demonstrates the processes of remembering and forgetting that are integral to acts of social memory. In this case, Kahanamoku's identity as a surfer is foregrounded over his legacy as a swimmer. The distillation and use of Kahanamoku's memory in this representation is enmeshed in deeper cultural forces about Hawaii's identity. Competing meanings of the statue's symbolism indicate its role as a 'hollow icon', and illustrate the way that apparently static objects representing the sporting past are in fact objects of the present

Transsexual Bodies at the Olympics: The International Olympic Committee's Policy on Transsexual Athletes at the 2004 Athens Summer Games

Sport exists on the premise that males and females are radically different. (Barnes, 2004) Thus sex gradually became an object of great suspicion; the general and disquieting meaning that pervades our conduct and our existence, in spite of ourselves; the point of weakness where evil portents reach through to us; the fragment of darkness that we each carry with us: a general signification, a universal secret, an omnipresent cause, a fear that never ends. (Foucault, 1978: 69) In May 2004 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) implemented a policy enabling transsexual athletes to compete at the summer Olympic Games in Athens. The IOC Medical Commission proposed that transsexual athletes who had Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) before puberty shall be admitted to compe-tition; that all other transsexuals must be post-operative (SRS including external genitalia and gonadectomy); must have legal and governmental recognition o