The Nimble Savage: Press Constructions of Pacific Islander Swimmers in Early Twentieth-century Australia

In the decades around Australian Federation in 1901, a number of Pacific Islanders gained prominence in aquatic sport on the beaches and in the pools of Sydney in particular. Two swimmers, brothers Alick and Edward (Ted) Wickham from the Solomon Islands, were especially prominent. This article examines racial constructions of these athletes by the Australian press. Given the existence of well-entrenched negative racial stereotypes about Pacific Islanders, and legislative manifestations of the White Australia policy that sought to deport and exclude Islanders, racially negative portrayals of the Wickhams might have been expected in the press. Instead, newspapers constructed these men in largely positive terms, idealising the supposedly natural ability of Islanders in water and reifying an aquatic Nimble Savage stereotype. While largely contained to a few individuals, this nonetheless powerful press construction presented an alternative perspective to the prevailing negative stereotypes

Object lesson: approaching nineteenth-century swimming through the Von Hammer probate inventory

This article borrows from material culture approaches to historical research to investigate the development of swimming baths and bathing culture in Sydney in the late nineteenth century. Specifically, it draws upon a probate inventory of effects and belongings of Ferdinand Von Hammer (1830–1889), a leading Sydney baths lessee and swimming instructor in the 1870s and 1880s. Swimming in this period is under-researched, and the Danish-born proprietor is a forgotten figure. He died at his leased Saywell’s Baths at Rockdale in Botany Bay, and his probate inventory includes objects that were integral to the operation of those facilities. It is a rare document that offers insight into the development of swimming culture in this period, the growing complexity of baths management, and suggests intersections with other social, cultural and economic aspects of swimming. Whereas material culture research more typically involves study of extant objects, this methodology fits with an alternative approach that engages with aggregated lists of items such as probate and other inventories and trade data. By grouping various related objects, this article focuses on lifesaving, swimming instruction and entertainment dimensions to extend knowledge of Australian swimming cultures

A Bird’s-Eye View of the Past: Digital History, Distant Reading and Sport History

Advances in computer technologies have made it easier than ever before for historians to access a wealth of sources made available in the digital era. This article investigates one way that historians have engaged with the challenges and opportunities of this ‘infinite archive’: distant reading. We define distant reading as an umbrella term that embraces many practices, including data mining, aggregation, text analysis, and the visual representations of these practices. This paper investigates the utility of distant reading as a research tool via three newspaper case studies concerning Muhammad Ali, women’s surfing in Australia, and homophobic language and Australian sport. The research reveals that the usefulness, effectiveness, and success of distant reading is dependent on numerous factors. While valuable in many instances, distant reading is rarely an end in itself and can be most powerful when paired with the traditional historical skills of close reading

EXPANDINDO HORIZONTES NA HISTÓRIA DO ESPORTE: FILMES, FOTOGRAFIAS E MONUMENTOS

Resumo: Historiadores do esporte, em geral, seguem práticas de trabalho historiográfico padronizadas ao buscarem narrar o passado no presente, focando seus interesses em material escrito. Esse artigo argumenta que, por mais importantes que as fontes escritas sejam para o trabalho do historiador, a história do esporte teria a ganhar se considerasse representações do passado que incluam cultura visual e material. Mais especificamente, este trabalho investiga filmes, fotografias e monumentos, e tenta responder duas questões-chave. Como os historiadores do esporte têm se relacionado com estas formas de cultura visual e material? Em segundo lugar, como poderiam os historiadores do esporte, baseado em práticas desenvolvidas em outros campos, ampliar o uso de filmes, fotografias e monumentos em seu trabalho? Argumentamos que os historiadores do esporte estão em uma posição que permite articular as complexas relações entre o passado esportivo e o presente usando diferentes formas de cultura visual e material.Palavras-Chave: filme, fotografia, metodologia, monumento BROADENING HORIZONS IN SPORT HISTORY: FILMS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND MONUMENTSAbstract: Sport historians, in the main, follow standard historical practice by focusing their interests on written material in their quests to relate the past in the present. This paper argues that as important as written sources are to the historical process, sport history could benefit by considering representations of the past that include visual and material culture. More specifically, this paper investigates film, photographs, and monuments and attempts to answer two key questions. How have sport historians related to these forms of visual and material culture? Secondly, how could sport historians, based on the practices developed in other fields, extend the use of films, photographs, and monuments in their work? We contend that sport historians are in a position to articulate the complex relationships between the sporting past in the present by embracing different forms of visual and material culture.Keywords: film, fotografia, methodology, monument

CATCH: A clinical decision rule for the use of computed tomography in children with minor head injury

Background: There is controversy about which children with minor head injury need to undergo computed tomography (CT). We aimed to develop a highly sensitive clinical decision rule for the use of CT in children with minor head injury. Methods: For this multicentre cohort study, we enrolled consecutive children with blunt head trauma presenting with a score of 13-15 on the Glasgow Coma Scale and loss of consciousness, amnesia, disorientation, persistent vomiting or irritability. For each child, staff in the emergency department completed a standardized assessment form before any CT. The main outcomes were need for neurologic intervention and presence of brain injury as determined by CT. We developed a decision rule by using recursive partitioning to combine variables that were both reliable and strongly associated with the outcome measures and thus to find the best combinations of predictor variables that were highly sensitive for detecting the outcome measures with maximal specificity. Results: Among the 3866 patients enrolled (mean age 9.2 years), 95 (2.5%) had a score of 13 on the Glasgow Coma Scale, 282 (7.3%) had a score of 14, and 3489 (90.2%) had a score of 15. CT revealed that 159 (4.1%) had a brain injury, and 24 (0.6%) underwent neurologic intervention. We derived a decision rule for CT of the head consisting of four high-risk factors (failure to reach score of 15 on the Glasgow coma scale within two hours, suspicion of open skull fracture, worsening headache and irritability) and three additional medium-risk factors (large, boggy hematoma of the scalp; signs of basal skull fracture; dangerous mechanism of injury). The high-risk factors were 100.0% sensitive (95% CI 86.2%-100.0%) for predicting the need for neurologic intervention and would require that 30.2% of patients undergo CT. The medium-risk factors resulted in 98.1% sensitivity (95% CI 94.6%-99.4%) for the prediction of brain injury by CT and would require that 52.0% of patients undergo CT. Interpretation: The decision rule developed in this study identifies children at two levels of risk. Once the decision rule has been prospectively validated, it has the potential to standardize and improve the use of CT for children with minor head injury. © 2010 Canadian Medical Association