Requiem for the College Women’s Gymnasium: Disciplining the Female Body in Educational and Architectural Space

Abstract

The women’s college gymnasium’s geographical, architectural and spatializing arrangements have historically been important ingredients in the social constitution of the gendered body. It has provided a critical stage on which struggles within the profession of physical education and its relation to competitive sport have been enacted both within its own boundaries and at the level of the broader campus and its shifting priorities. This paper explores the rise and demise of women’s gymnasia on North American college campuses from the late nineteenth to the latter decades of the twentieth century to illuminate how the shifting academic landscape has reflected changing attitudes towards the perceived needs of female students and the nature of their training in physical education and movement sciences. The analysis focuses upon two women’s colleges in the United States remarkable for their architectural splendour and programme integrity: the University of California at Berkeley’s Phoebe Apperson Hearst Memorial Gymnasium for Women and the Anna Hiss Gymnasium at the University of Texas, Austin. It laments their gradual demise as academic institutions have increasingly shifted their priorities and the world of the female gymnasium has retracted to be reinserted into college campuses’ twenty-first century vision for student recreation and competitive sport.     

‘The Cradle of American Champions,Women Champions Swim Champions’: Charlotte Epstein,Gender and Jewish Identity,and the Physical Emancipation of Women in Aquatic Sports

Charlotte Epstein advocated ardently for American women's competitive swimming and expanded swimming for women nationally and internationally in the early twentieth century. In her leadership as chair of the Athletic Branch of the National Women's Life Saving League (1913), and in battling the United States Olympic Committee to allow girls from the swim club she founded, the Women's Swimming Association of New York (1917), to compete in the 1920 Olympics, Epstein as an athlete and administrator advanced women's aquatic sports. This article explores the importance of Charlotte Epstein, an American Jewish woman, and the gender and ethnic contexts of her efforts in increasing women's participation in various swimming events. Epstein's ties with Jewish organizations such as the Young Women's Hebrew Association and the Maccabiah Games shaped her identity in aquatic sports. This analysis of Epstein's activism in swimming, such as in promoting swim races for suffrage and bathing-suit reform, illustrates her vital role in women's physical emancipation in the water and in American culture.     

‘Not Merely an Isolated Game’: Women’s Association Football in Australia

ABSTRACT

Australia has participated in the world-wide growth of women’s football particularly since the 1970s, but long before that the game was played recreationally and competitively by women in Australia. Women have struggled to overcome active opposition to their taking part in the sport and neglect of their achievements which are considerable. This article provides an outline of the history of the game both nationally and in its international context. It also tries to capture the experience of some of the pioneers of the women’s game and its modern practitioners, revealing some of the ways in which overt and covert discrimination still hinders recognition of their achievements.     

Mission Statements and Cake Stalls: The Women’s Supporter Group in Australian Football League Clubs

ABSTRACT

The Australian Football League (AFL) has made extensive efforts in the past decade to ensure that Australian Rules football is seen as an inclusive culture that respects, acknowledges, and desires the presence of female supporters in its membership base. Given that women have constituted a significant proportion of the football audience since the inception of the game in the mid-1800s, this show of support for women would appear to be belated and leads one to question what other motivations lie behind it. This article questions whether these recent attempts to acknowledge women as an important constituent group in AFL football culture, through the formation and/or maintenance of dedicated female supporter groups and networks in AFL football clubs, are genuinely aimed at making AFL club culture more inclusive of women.     

An Ironic Imbalance: Coaching Opportunities and Gender in Women’s Artistic Gymnastics in Australia and New Zealand

Abstract

Women’s Artistic Gymnastics (WAG) is a sport designed specifically for women. With roots in ballet, calisthenics and eugenics, it was meant to showcase femininity, beauty, and encourage healthy bodies for motherhood, therefore offering socially acceptable sporting opportunities for females. This paper considers whether such sporting opportunities extended to female coaches. We examine the recruitment patterns in relation to gender of some of the top coaches in Australia and New Zealand since the 1980s, who are predominantly migrants. Using archival sources, interviews and personal experience, this paper argues that while so-called feminine or artistic sports can offer greater opportunities for female coaches, WAG in Australia and New Zealand remains dominated by male coaches, who have held the majority of the head coach positions and in many cases, been actively recruited from overseas. The few females who have been employed in top positions have been appointments of ‘convenience’ rather than reflective of a shift away from these gendered employment patterns. Thus, while its creation as a specifically feminine sport may lead WAG to be viewed as a site of increased opportunities for women coaches, deeper exploration reveals an unresolved tension between the use of male and female coaches.     

Gender,photography and women’s football in England: the Portsmouth Ladies FC, 1916–1918

ABSTRACT

Founded in 1916, the Portsmouth Ladies FC were one of many women’s football teams active during the First World War. Building upon the work of Jean Williams, Patrick Brennan and Ian Nannestad, this article seeks to broaden our knowledge of the development of women’s wartime football. Its principal sources are images held by National Football Museum, the Pompey History Society, along with newly digitised newspapers. This article explores two aspects of the club’s history. Firstly, it presents an overview detailing the team’s origins, playing record, the types of games they played, including games against male teams, and the role of Councillor Tom Langdon in organising and promoting their activities. Secondly, it will explore the significant photographic coverage afforded to the team, in particular by the Portsmouth Evening News photographer Joseph Stephen Cribb. It will be argued that the club’s history helps develop the chronological development of women’s football in World War On. It will also be argued that visual depictions of the team show both an increasing interest in the women’s game, and also the limits and gendered nature of that interest.     

Football,sport and the development of young people’s life skills

The development of life skills has been associated with participation in sport, football and other physical activities. A factor in enabling this ambition to be realized is the actions and behaviours of sports coaches. Drawing on the concept of positive youth development through sport, the first part of this paper considers the types of environments coaches need to create in order for players to develop life skills. The second part of this paper discusses formal coach education and its role in developing coaches’ knowledge of life skills development. The third and final section of this paper offers an alternative explanation of how people’s exposure to certain social contexts results in the development of life skills. A review of literature in these areas reveals that the role sport and football has played in players’ development of life skills is unclear and in need of future research attention.     

Football participation legacy and Australia’s qualification for the 2006 Football World Cup

This paper examines the impact of qualification for the 2006 World Cup on football participation in Australia. Australia’s qualification for the 2006 World Cup created widespread media coverage across the country, and this was amplified by the fact that it was only the second time the nation had qualified for the event. Contrary to a number of studies that have examined sport participation legacy and major events, this research presents data that suggest an overall positive trend in Australian football participation post Australia’s successful World Cup qualification. Three of the four demographic categories examined in the study had witnessed increased football participation across the examined period.     

‘Old’ Football and the ‘New’ Codes: Some Thoughts on the ‘Origins of Football’ Debate and Suggestions for Further Research

A close reading of recent contributions to the ‘origins of football’ debate suggests that there is now more consensus among scholars about the broad sequence of events than is rhetorically allowed. However, this consensus itself rests on some shared conceptual and methodological illusions. These include: a continual naivety about the use of the name ‘football’ in the primary source materials; asystematic underestimation of forms of play (and a collateral overestimation of the importance of rules and codifications) in the development of football; and, above all, a widely shared, and very dubious, conviction that the pursuit of the historical origins of football is a meaningful activity. This article analyses each ofthese illusions in turn and suggests some methodological and substantive alternatives to them. These alternatives sum to the conclusion that the origin of both modern football codes is a far more remarkable and many-sided story than has been appreciated, even in the very best research to date. Moreover, it is a story whose many dimensions and implications go well beyond the borders of Britain, and indeed beyond the history of ‘soccer’ or ‘rugby’ alone.     

‘Definitely not Cricket’ the Times and the Football World Cup 1930–1970

In July 1967, 15 million people were glued to their TV sets to watch one of the most audacious BBC outside broadcasts – the climbing of the Old Man of Hoy. A 450-foot crumbling sea stack situated in the Orkneys was conquered by six climbers in a broadcast that has been dubbed the first ‘reality television’ programme. It connected an armchair audience with the elite of a sport subculture intent on conquering one of Britain's most spectacular geological treasures. This paper, which draws on original archive material, autobiographical accounts and press reports, examines the climb and situates the broadcast historically within the evolution of televised climbing in Britain, and considers the continuing and evolving relationship between climbers and the media.     

‘We Will Try Again,Again, Again to Make It Bigger’: Japan,American Football,and the Super Bowl in the Past,Present, and Future

Abstract

This study is to analyse how the Japanese have traditionally received and currently perceive the Super Bowl, and for this purpose, it aims to locate the position of American football in Japanese history, society, and culture. It explores the game’s history and then examine the degree of its spread among Japan’s sporting population. A two-dimensional approach of historical study and inter-game comparison gives context to the analyses of reference frequency and contents of news media, followed by speculative discussions of what the near future of Japan’s American football would be like. To conclude, it clarifies the ways the Super Bowl has been received and is now being perceived by two groups: The first group is the general people who see the Super Bowl as the convenient and useful medium by which they could learn effectively about American culture through the one-night mania for ‘conspicuous consumption’. The second group comprises American football experts and enthusiasts, including 13,000 athletes and their OBs, coaches, trainers, and other staff members of the leagues and associations as well as the general sports fans. For this group, the Super Bowl is the apex of their favourite sport to which only a selected talented few could join.     

Understanding China’s School Football Fever in the Post-Beijing Olympic Era, 2009–2016: Policy and Practice

Abstract

This article aims to understand the current policies, practices, and challenges in the sphere of football training in schools of China by investigating campus football development in Anhui province. From 2009 to 2016, China has formulated policies to improve the popularity of football at the school level. With the Chinese government’s investment, the number of primary and secondary schools with specialized football training facilities has increased to 13,382 by 2016. These schools with football as a specialty (SFS) enjoy policy support in teaching, training, competitions, and in many other fields. By employing semistructured interviews, participatory observations as well as an analysis of various policy documents, this article provides an insight into the implementation of China’s school football policies by local government. It shows that these SFS have demonstrated desires and capacities to develop football performance in response to demands from the Chinese government. However, a number of developing issues exist in both SFS and non-SFS, such as lack of football fields for training and shortage of professionally qualified coaches as well as tensions between football training and other subjects learning. China still needs more time to fulfil her task for the promotion of grassroots football on campus and to achieve elite football dreams.     

Football at the ‘End of the Line’: Economic Decline,Cross-Subsidies and Football League Membership in the NW Steel District of England

Sporting leagues are generally based on collectivist principles, as the members need one another to produce their product. For much of its existence, the Football League has functioned as a cartel, operating income-sharing arrangements and controlling its membership. In the period from 1959 to 1986, a limited number of clubs left the League through the re-election process, in modest recognition of geographical logic, as clubs from growth areas to the south typically replaced clubs from more traditional economic areas that were often over-represented in the Football League. Clubs are widely seen to be utility-maximisers seeking success. Success in a sporting league is defined in a precise and relativist way and this article focuses on two of the least successful clubs to have played in the Football League, Barrow AFC and Workington FC, whose failure to obtain repeated re-election in the 1970s removed the only Football League clubs in a distinct economic zone, the north-west coastal steel district. This article examines the re-election mechanism and the particular economic factors that affected these two clubs, ranging from the decline of their main local industry to changes in the levels of and responsibilities attaching to rising cross-subsidy payments in the Football League.     

Professional Football in Apartheid South Africa: Leisure,Consumption and Identity in the National Football League, 1959–1977

A growing body of academic and popular literature considers the history of South African football. These and existing publications pay little or no attention to the emergence of white professional football in apartheid South Africa. The National Football League (NFL) challenged the amateur game and introduced professional football to the country. During its 17-year existence, the NFL grew each season with large attendances until its demise in 1977. In addition, the NFL imported a range of international players, invited foreign teams and actively engaged in the political debates in South African sport at the time. The NFL was instrumental in popularising the game across the country for all South Africans. The NFL became the most popular sports entertainment of choice for South Africans during this period. Finally, the NFL actively engaged in a campaign of destroying rival non-racial anti-apartheid leagues while simultaneously co-opting less progressive organisations.     

Colonial Olympism: Puerto Rico and Jamaica’s Olympic Movement in Pan‐American Sport, 1930 to the 1950s

Abstract

This paper examines how two Caribbean islands, Puerto Rico and Jamaica, developed ideas of national identity while negotiating political emancipation within two distinct, yet allied Anglophone empires. We can see this process through the Olympic movement and referred to here as ‘colonial Olympism’. Both Puerto Rico and Jamaica participated as colonies of the USA and Great Britain at international sporting events from 1930 to the 1950s. More than a benevolent gesture by the USA or Great Britain, Puerto Rico and Jamaica’s participation was intended to foster international goodwill through sport, including crucial notions of Pan Americanism. Comparing these two islands, and the metropolises they represented, offers a good way to understand the commonalities and differences in the US and Great Britain’s geopolitical interests in Latin America. However, the Olympic and the Pan-American Games gave both colonies the perfect scenario to perform as separate nations and fed a sense of distinct peoplehood. Sport leaders from both islands negotiated their way into nationhood by the very fact of participating in the Olympic movement, albeit as non-sovereign states. In turn, having Olympic nationhood became another important tool in both islands’ quest for decolonization, contributing an important angle to better understand twentieth-century international politics and decolonization processes.     

Cuba’s Challenges Hosting the 1991 Pan-American Games and the Spectacle of the Revolution’s ‘Soft Power’

Abstract

This paper examines the confluence of global, regional, and national politics in the lead up to the 1991 Pan-American Games hosted by Cuba. Cuba’s contentious selection as host was wholly underpinned by the international politics of the time. Once selected, the preparations for the Games in Havana were surrounded by an unprecedented domestic economic crisis fueled by shifts in global politics. This paper analyzes how international politics informed the hosting of the 1991 Pan-American Games, and shaped the political challenge the Cuban government faced in hosting such an event. The Revolution’s use of sport domestically and internationally came to the forefront in its efforts as host and the results of those efforts proved to be providential given the emerging political economic contexts during and in the ensuing years after the Games.     

Going ‘to the Fountainhead’: Black American Athletes as Cultural Ambassadors in Africa, 1970–1971

During the Cold War, the State Department frequently employed prominent black athletes as cultural ambassadors in an attempt to defuse global criticism of racism in the USA. In the late 1960s, as many black American athletes identified increasingly with the “Black Power” movement, their personal motivations often clashed with State Department goals. In 1970, the black American tennis star Arthur Ashe, along with Stan Smith, conducted an extremely successful tour of six African nations. The following year, the State Department attempted to replicate that success by sending NBA stars Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson to Africa. Those players, for a variety of reasons, were less cooperative and effective than Ashe. The shortcomings of the Jabbar/Robertson tour contributed to a decline in the State Department's practice of utilising star black athletes as cultural diplomats.