Shifting currents : a world history of swimming / Karen Eva Carr.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Carr, Karen Eva, 1964- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Swimming.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (456 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

London, England : Reaktion Books, [2022]

Summary:

A deep dive into the history of aquatics that exposes centuries-old tensions of race, gender, and power at the root of many contemporary swimming controversies. Shifting Currents is an original and comprehensive history of swimming. It examines the tension that arose when non-swimming northerners met African and Southeast Asian swimmers. Using archaeological, textual, and art-historical sources, Karen Eva Carr shows how the water simultaneously attracted and repelled these northerners--swimming seemed uncanny, related to witchcraft and sin. Europeans used Africans' and Native Americans' swimming skills to justify enslaving them, but northerners also wanted to claim water's power for themselves. They imagined that swimming would bring them health and demonstrate their scientific modernity. As Carr reveals, this unresolved tension still sexualizes women's swimming and marginalizes Black and Indigenous swimmers today. Thus, the history of swimming offers a new lens through which to gain a clearer view of race, gender, and power on a centuries-long scale.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Contents

Introduction

Part I: Learning to Swim

1. Once Everyone Could Swim

2. Leaving Africa

3. A Northern Swimming Hole

4. Danger, Sex, Gods and Strangers

5. Learning to Swim

6. Ancient Greece and Rome

7. Soldiers and Divers

Part II: Forgetting How to Swim

8. Medieval Asia

9. Medieval Europe

10. Central Asian Power

11. A Famous Drowning

12. The Little Ice Age

Part III: Still Swimming

13. African Swimmers

14. In the Americas

15. China and the Pacific Ocean

16. Floating for Witchcraft

17. Ducking Stools

Part IV: Changing Places

18. The Avant-garde

19. The Middle Class

20. Out with the Old, In with the New

21. Swimming is So Last Century

22. Everyone Out of the Water

Epilogue

Chronology

References

Further Reading

Acknowledgements

Photo Acknowledgements

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Carr, Karen Eva Shifting Currents

ISBN:

9781789145779

OCLC:

1312171386