Duke University Press Log

Making a Splash at Figure Skating's Adult Nationals

This week US Figure Skating's Adult National Championships take place outside Chicago. In her new book Red Nails, Black Skates: Gender, Cash, and Pleasure On and Off the Ice, Erica Rand describes how she came to be a competitive figure skater in her mid-forties. As Rand writes, "adult" in the world of figure skating does not refer to sexual content, but rather "to people skating after an age when they might reasonbly expect to become the next Brian Boitano or Peggy Fleming." Rand attended several Adult Nationals both as a competitor and as an observer of the rules, gender conventions, fashions, and behind-the-scenes friendships. Here's an excerpt from her chapter on how she challenged some of those conventions at the 2009 competition:

"I made a little splash at the 2009 Adult Nationals. It wasn’t for skilled skating. Besides competing in the lowest freestyle level at an, I botched most of my spins and jumps. Instead, I stood out for violating the unwritten rules of music, dress, and gender presentation for women. My music, harder edged than most, came from the Pink Floyd song “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” as well as an instrumental version of Nine Inch Nails’s “Closer,” which is better known by its primary lyric 'I want to fuck you like an animal,' although people familiar with the song might not have placed my excerpt. Unlike my competitors’ costumes, which involved skating dresses and skin- colored tights, my costume featured black leggings under a short, pleated black skirt from Hot Topic that had silver- colored studs and chains. Besides accenting the music with a bit of mainstreamed bondage fashion, the metallic elements provided the requisite skating- costume sparkle ordinarily met by jewel- like stones. My hair, instead of the common bun or ponytail in natural, or natural looking, hair color, had red chunks dyed into a relatively short bluish black.
  I hadn’t considered the costume or music to be so outrageous; neither had my coach. So I was surprised when people sought me out later to praise my refreshing deviation from the norm. 'We don’t think the judges liked it,' someone tracked me down in the parking lot to say, 'but we did.'"(page 117)

For a chance to win an advance review copy of Rand's book, leave a comment here or on our Facebook page about why you love or hate (or love to hate) figure skating. We'll notify the two winners later this week.

 

 

 

Krista Comer and the Culture of Surfing

Check out our latest author interview video! Krista Comer, author of Surfer Girls in the New World Order (2010), chats with Amanda E. Sharp, our Publicity & Marketing Assistant, about her research, globalization, female surfers, and, of course, surfing.

 

Surfer Girls in the New World Order explores surfing as a local and global subculture, looking at how the culture of surfing has affected and been affected by girls, from baby boomers to members of Generation Y.

Classic Book Explains Cricket to Mystified Americans

Cricket has been in the international news lately because of a game-fixing scandal featuring the Pakistani team. Three Pakistani players have been suspended from the team for participating in an illegal betting scheme. International Olympic Committe president Jacques Rogge said yesterday that he believes illegal betting is a worldwide problem for sport, of similar magnitude to recent doping scandals. While British and South Asian cricket fans follow the scandal eagerly, many Americans are completely mystified by the sport of cricket. Those who want to understand it better should turn to the classic work on the sport by C. L. R. James, Beyond a Boundary. Reviewing the book when it first came out in the U.S. in 1983, the Utne Reader said, "If you want to look deeper into cricket’s intriguing history, check out Beyond a Boundary by C.L.R. James. First published in 1963, this modern cricket classic is both a tribute to the game that James grew up playing in his native Trinidad and a memoir of his years in England as a radical writer leading the crusade for West Indian independence." Nearly sixty years after it was first published, the book still resonates.

Download a Free Chapter from Debating Moral Education

Duke professor Michael Allen Gillespie published an op-ed in the Durham Herald-Sun yesterday about the recently-concluded NCAA basketball finals. The fact that the schools who ended up facing each other in the championship, Duke and Butler, both are known for serious academics and high graduation rates as well as sports, is a win for all college sports, he says. Earlier this year, David Brooks of the New York Times praised Gillespie's essay on college sports and ethics in the book Debating Moral Education: Rethinking the Role of the Modern University. We are pleased to offer a free download of the chapter on our website. Click on the "Additional Info" tab on under "Explore More" to see the link.

Brush up on Your Duke Blue Devil Trivia

The Duke Blue Devils head to the Final Four in Indianapolis tomorrow. Before the big game, brush up on all your Duke basketball trivia by reading John Roth's The Encyclopedia of Duke Basketball. It's the ultimate reference source for true-blue fans, with profiles of great games, classic finishes (both wins and losses), and compelling personalities, including players, coaches, and opponents. While it is filled with a wealth of statistical information. It covers both men's and women's basketball and is full of facts that will surprise even the most seasoned Blue Devil fan. Did you know that Duke fans were the first to use the chant "Airball!" after the opposing team missed a free throw? Do you remember 1999, when both the men's and women's teams made it to the NCAA finals, and then both lost? Did you know the team was once known as The Methodists? Amaze your friends and family during commercial breaks with these and other great facts.

David Brooks on Debating Moral Education

In his column for today's New York Times, David Brooks mentions our new collection Debating Moral Education: Rethinking the Role of the Modern University, edited by Elizabeth Kiss and J. Peter Euben. I particular Brooks singles out the essay "Players and Spectators: Sports and Ethical Training in the Modern University" by Duke University's Michael Allen Gillespie. Brooks calls the essay fascinating but he differs with Gillespie in his final assessment of the value of college sports. Gillespie, he writes, "wants to reform college sports into something smaller and more participatory." But Brooks believes college sports are important for community-building. He concludes, "Big-time college sports are absurd, but we would miss them if they were gone."

Brenda Weber on Gender Testing in Athletics

The case of South African track and field star Caster Semenya has recently caused many people to ask where we should draw the "line" in terms of gender in athletics. Brenda Weber, author of Makeover TV: Selfhood, Citizenship, and Celebrity, argues at NPR.org that a "line" is the wrong metaphor to use in the complicated issue of determining someone's sex/gender. She writes, "A line suggests that there are clear distinctions, yet the truth is that bodies are far more diverse than our popular terminology for sex and gender allow." As we approach the Olympic Games in Vancouver, Weber says, "The IOC would be better served were it to let all sexed bodies compete in the Olympics and instead re-direct their attentions and energies to a new classification system that makes other distinctions between athletes rather than the exclusive segregation of male and female."

Heather Levi on Lucha Libre in USA Today

Anthropologist Heather Levi, author of The World of Lucha Libre, is quoted in a USA Today article about how the U.S.-based World Wrestling Entertainment is threatening traditional Mexican wrestling. Reporter Chris Hawley writes, "In Mexico, a country intensely proud of its wrestling tradition, the WWE is making an unprecedented push to win over Mexican fans, signing new television contracts, striking merchandising deals, launching a magazine and bringing its muscle-bound stars south of the border for live events." Levi says that "Stunning acrobatics, masked heroes and a lack of chatter" characterize lucha libre, while WWE style wrestling is much more about talk and storylines. "In U.S. wrestling, they talk for 10 minutes and wrestle for one. In lucha libre, it's very intense athletics for 20 or 30 minutes," she said.

Sex Controversy at the World Track and Field Championships

In Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority, and Lived Experience, Katrina Karkazis discusses the complicated issue of sex assignment. The complicated questions of what designates one as "male" or "female" was part of a controversy surrounding a young South African runner's win at the World Track and Field Championships in Berlin last week. Caster Semenya was subjected to gender tests while officials debated whether or not she should be allowed to keep her gold medal, arguing that she might not be strictly female and, therefore, ineligible for the women's 800 meters.

Today, Semenya returned home to welcoming fans. South Africa's president announced, ''We are not going to allow Europeans to describe and define our children." As The New York Times reports, this debate is shedding light on what could be a larger issue in sports: "how sports officials are supposed to discern the fuzzy biological line between male and female."

The Quality of Home Runs Reviewed in Times Higher

Thomas F. Carter's anthropology book on baseball, The Quality of Home Runs, was reviewed in the April 30th edition of the Times Higher Education Supplement. Reviewer Matthew Reisz recognizes that such a book "could only have been written by someone with a deep love for the game." He also points out the importance of Carter's research by saying, "Carter's work proves just how illuminating it can be when sport's pleasures--and its inevitable links with politics and real life--are taken as seriously as they deserve to be."