| Description |
1 online resource (456 p.) |
| 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 |
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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 |
| 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 -- Provided by publisher |
| Notes |
Description based upon print version of record |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Subject |
Swimming -- History
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Swimming
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| Genre/Form |
History
|
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Informational works.
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Documents d'information.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9781789145779 |
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1789145775 |
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