Search Results

General conclusion

John Montgomery and David Bodznick

in Evolution of the Cerebellar Sense of Self

This book has aimed to clarify and substantiate the claims: firstly that the cerebellum, in much the same form as it evolved in the sharks, is the source of the athleticism and movement finesse that ... More

This book has aimed to clarify and substantiate the claims: firstly that the cerebellum, in much the same form as it evolved in the sharks, is the source of the athleticism and movement finesse that we see in swimming, running, climbing, and flying vertebrates; secondly that work on the cerebellum has the potential to be at the forefront of endeavours to understand the mechanistic details of how the brain can accomplish its most complex and sophisticated actions; and thirdly that the conserved structure of the cerebellar ‘chip’ over such a long evolutionary period and the dramatic diversity of functional utility enabled by the ‘chip’ provide inspiration for technological mimics.Less

Phaethon

C. Collard, M. J. Cropp, and K. H. Lee

in Euripides: Selected Fragmentary Plays: Volume I

This chapter addresses Euripides' Phaethon. Until about 1820, very few of the fifteen or so book fragments could be related confidently to a plot presumed from mythographic accounts to include ... More

This chapter addresses Euripides' Phaethon. Until about 1820, very few of the fifteen or so book fragments could be related confidently to a plot presumed from mythographic accounts to include Phaethon's fatal drive in the chariot of his father Helios the Sun. Phaethon is one of the more substantial fragmentary plays, but much of the content is conjectural and the general tone is hard to know. Some of the play's motifs and their development sit a little uneasily amid irony, tragedy, pathos, and melodrama. Phaethon's fall has been seen as essentially tragic: youth destroyed by its presumption. Euripides presented him as an adventurer whose own folly and the implicitly irrational course of fortune combined to destroy him. Two places in the text are said to suggest that he was temperamentally hostile to marriage; then he is seen as a kind of Hippolytus figure, perhaps devoted to athleticism and credibly attracted by the challenge of his father's chariot.Less

Arab Athleticism and the Exoticization of the American Dream, 1870–1920

Susan Nance

in How the Arabian Nights Inspired the American Dream 1791–1935

This chapter discusses how foreign-born people added personae of Eastern athleticism to the American repertoire after 1900. It describes the North African and Syrian men who fared best in getting ... More

This chapter discusses how foreign-born people added personae of Eastern athleticism to the American repertoire after 1900. It describes the North African and Syrian men who fared best in getting over as obviously male, powerful, and exotic in American showbusiness. In the guise of Arab horsemen and self-starting acrobats in traveling circuses, Wild West shows, and vaudeville, they offered portrayals of Arab athleticism that flattered American patriotism in comprehensibly exotic modes.Less

Wilde's Folly

in The World in Play: Portraits of a Victorian Concept

This chapter examines Oscar Wilde's anti-athleticism. Though many critics cling to the popular image of Wilde as ludic martyr in a tragically unplayful age, his relationship with Victorian culture ... More

This chapter examines Oscar Wilde's anti-athleticism. Though many critics cling to the popular image of Wilde as ludic martyr in a tragically unplayful age, his relationship with Victorian culture was more complicated than that. What made him so controversial was his refusal to take play seriously or to show it the proper respect by competing with his fellow Victorians in the mandatory sport of modern life. Wilde considered earnestness a form of moral athleticism, the apotheosis of the competitive impulse: an ugly desire to win. He was a spoilsport, who refused to catch the ball or score a manly victory, enraging his fellow players and inviting the wrath of the world in play to rain down upon his head. In his courageous willingness to lose a game from which there is no escape, and thus to live forever in loss, Wilde discovered the art of love.Less

Why Leopold Bloom Menstruates

Austin Briggs

in Bloomsday 100: Essays on Ulysses

This chapter examines a persistent vein of imagery in James Joyce's Ulysses which cross-associates Bloom with stereotypical properties of Jewishness, particularly those of effeminacy and the peculiar ... More

This chapter examines a persistent vein of imagery in James Joyce's Ulysses which cross-associates Bloom with stereotypical properties of Jewishness, particularly those of effeminacy and the peculiar slur of male menstruation. Moreover, the panoply of racist stigmas, as the chapter deftly shows, is inherently contradictory because it simultaneously casts Jews as vengeful and bloodthirsty and as timorous and emasculated. Ultimately, Joyce references and counterpoints the lurid denigrations of anti-Semitism and the discourses of masculinism and athleticism espoused by Irish nationalists such as Michael Cusack and Patrick Pearse in order to refute them. This chapter argues that the unmanliness and pacifism of Stephen and especially of Bloom act as a pointed counter to political ideologies that aggrandize violence and aggression.Less

Genetics, Epigenetics, and Talent

Jay Schulkin

in Sport: A Biological, Philosophical, and Cultural Perspective

Looks at genes and their expression in athletic capability. There is no athletic gene; there is a general confluence of specific and general capabilities that converge on athletic expression. Such ... More

Looks at genes and their expression in athletic capability. There is no athletic gene; there is a general confluence of specific and general capabilities that converge on athletic expression. Such events reflect experience, culture and epigenetic expression; the absolute continuity of biology and culture; both a reflection of one another.Less

Yes, Boys Take Ballet Class Too

Melissa R. Klapper

in Ballet Class: An American History

While it is true that girls have always outnumbered them, boys have always been present in ballet class, and their numbers have grown steadily over the twentieth century. Due to gendered associations ... More

While it is true that girls have always outnumbered them, boys have always been present in ballet class, and their numbers have grown steadily over the twentieth century. Due to gendered associations of ballet with girls and women in the United States, boys in ballet class have faced questions about their masculinity and sexuality. The impact of second-wave feminism on ideas about gender roles made ballet a more socially acceptable activity for boys. There have also been a number of strategies from within the ballet world to appeal to more boys, including offering free tuition, emphasizing the athleticism of ballet, and stressing the greater professional opportunities for male dancers.Less

Shaw's Athletic-Minded Women

Tracy J. R. Collins

in Shaw and Feminisms: On Stage and Off

Shaw's disdain for the traditional “womanly woman” and support for female education are well known, and considerable attention has been paid to the way his female characters exhibit social and ... More

Shaw's disdain for the traditional “womanly woman” and support for female education are well known, and considerable attention has been paid to the way his female characters exhibit social and intellectual emancipation. However, scholars have so far overlooked Shaw's emphasis on the physical dimension of women's emancipation and his insistent support for physical fitness and athleticism in women. Tracy Collins surveys Shaw's oeuvre in light of contemporary feminist theories of the body, highlighting the extraordinary physicality of his female characters and the integral role it plays for their liberation from confining, conventional gender roles.Less

• Appearance and Manner

Clive Brown

in A Portrait of Mendelssohn

As a child, Felix Mendelssohn seems to have attracted attention not only for his musical gifts but also for his manner and physical appearance. According to Mendelssohn's composition teacher Carl ... More

As a child, Felix Mendelssohn seems to have attracted attention not only for his musical gifts but also for his manner and physical appearance. According to Mendelssohn's composition teacher Carl Friedrich Zelter, his pupil was “good and pretty, lively and obedient.” In the opinion of most of his contemporaries, Mendelssohn's portraits failed to convey the mercurial traits that often made his features fascinating and arresting. One of his closest English musical friends, William Sterndale Bennett, described Mendelssohn as having the appearance of an angel. William Makepeace Thackeray commented that “his face is the most beautiful face I ever saw...” whereas Richard Wagner claimed that he looked so fat and unpleasant. As he grew older, Mendelssohn apparently did not lose any of his physical attractiveness. Many noted the contrast between his slight build and his athleticism. Others, like George Grove and Bayard Taylor, admired his eyes. In the last few years of his life, however, Mendelssohn's features and bearing showed signs of strain.Less

The 1890s: New Women, Bloomer Girls, and the Old Ball Game

Debra A. Shattuck

in Bloomer Girls: Women Baseball Pioneers

The 1890s saw a dramatic redefinition of femininity that coalesced into the image of the Gibson Girl and “New Woman.” Men like Bernarr Macfadden taught women that athleticism was a prerequisite of ... More

The 1890s saw a dramatic redefinition of femininity that coalesced into the image of the Gibson Girl and “New Woman.” Men like Bernarr Macfadden taught women that athleticism was a prerequisite of beauty; thousands of women began riding bicycles and playing vigorous sports with gusto. Women’s professional baseball shifted from theatrical to highly competitive and featured talented female players like Maud Nelson and Lizzie Arlington. Their “Bloomer Girl” teams barnstormed the country playing men’s amateur and semi-professional teams. Many decried the New Woman ideal and critics of female baseball players called them Amazons and freaks. Bloomer Girl teams of the 1890s paved the way for the talented female teams of the twentieth century.Less

The Selling of the Alps and the Beginning of the “Golden Age”: Albert Smith and Alfred Wills

Caroline Schaumann

in Peak Pursuits: The Emergence of Mountaineering in the Nineteenth Century

This chapter draws attention to the Golden Age of Mountaineering. It assesses the contested discourses of Alpinism in the years between 1854 and 1865 at the intersection of science, romanticism, ... More

This chapter draws attention to the Golden Age of Mountaineering. It assesses the contested discourses of Alpinism in the years between 1854 and 1865 at the intersection of science, romanticism, athleticism, and escapism. The chapter juxtaposes Albert Smith's fortieth ascent of Mont Blanc in an extravagant guided caravan with Alfred Wills's September 1854 Wetterhorn ascent that was commonly regarded as the beginning of the sport in the Golden Age. It points out how Smith and Wills's ascents foreshadowed the emergent militarization and nationalization of the sport, a more prominent gender discourse, and the ensuing competition in the first ascent of the Matterhorn. It also mentions Edward Whymper, who became obsessed with being the first person to climb the Matterhorn and succeeded on July 14, 1865.Less

Ice Princess: Asada Mao the Demure Diva

Masafumi Monden

in Diva Nation: Female Icons from Japanese Cultural History

Asada Mao’s life recounts a dramatic narrative of suffering and triumph. It follows a girl considered beautiful during her meteoric rise to skating stardom, a period of hardships she confronts ... More

Asada Mao’s life recounts a dramatic narrative of suffering and triumph. It follows a girl considered beautiful during her meteoric rise to skating stardom, a period of hardships she confronts tacitly, and the performance of her life at the 2014 Olympics that touched many around the world. This chapter reconsiders Asada’s public persona as a diligent athlete and as the good girl-next-door who speaks with a smile. Asada seems to embody an ideal Japanese young womanhood. Behind this innocent persona, however, is a strong woman with a fierce commitment to her professional performance and audiences and with a skillful way of concealing her personal life from the public eye. This chapter argues that Asada is a diva who captures the heart of people with her extraordinary looks, artistry, and athletic talents—a diva whose spectacular performances and risk-taking behaviors always excite audiences and whose good-girl persona may be her greatest performance of all.Less

Something to Cheer About?

Jaime Schultz

in Qualifying Times: Points of Change in U.S. Women's Sport

This chapter turns to competitive cheerleading. Over the past one hundred years, cheerleading has been noticeably gendered, regendered, sexualized, commercialized, and sportified. Recently, various ... More

This chapter turns to competitive cheerleading. Over the past one hundred years, cheerleading has been noticeably gendered, regendered, sexualized, commercialized, and sportified. Recently, various organizations have worked hard to legitimize competitive cheer, though they have met resistance from women's sports advocates, members of the cheer industry, and residual perceptions of who a cheerleader is and what she does. Where cheerleading was once the sole purview of men, the majority of today's participants are women. These shifts have brought about an undeniable sexual aspect to the pursuit, which scholars Pamela J. Bettis and Natalie Guice Adams characterize as rife with “exotic tensions.” The chapter analyzes whether cheer's newest incarnations reconcile the persistent divide between athleticism and femininity, or if it simply reasserts conventional schisms between them.Less

How does the cerebellum work? Model systems: Compensating for self-movement (vestibulo-ocular reflex), predictive motor learning (eye blink reflex), voluntary goal-directed behaviour (saccades), and action and reaction

John Montgomery and David Bodznick

in Evolution of the Cerebellar Sense of Self

Model systems have been critical to developing our understanding of cerebellar function. The vestibulo-ocular reflex stabilizes the eyes during head movement and depends on the cerebellum to maintain ... More

Model systems have been critical to developing our understanding of cerebellar function. The vestibulo-ocular reflex stabilizes the eyes during head movement and depends on the cerebellum to maintain accurate function. Classical conditioning of the eye blink reflex is an example of predictive motor learning where the role of the cerebellum is to appropriately time the conditioned response. Voluntary goal-directed behaviour, such as target-directed eye movements, harnesses the cerebellar circuitry to maintain accuracy and compensates for self-induced perturbations that occur during the movement such as an eye blink. In the general context of everyday movement, the role of the cerebellum in the actions and reactions that underlie animal athleticism is likely to be pervasive, but also inextricably intertwined with the wider motor control networks.Less

The Functions of Association Football in the Boys’ Brigade in Ireland, 1888–1914

Brendan Power

in Leisure and the Irish in the Nineteenth Century

This chapter discusses the varied functions of association football in the Boys’ Brigade in Ireland. It argues that athleticism was a significant motivating element for leaders in encouraging the ... More

This chapter discusses the varied functions of association football in the Boys’ Brigade in Ireland. It argues that athleticism was a significant motivating element for leaders in encouraging the growth of football and the organisation provides an opportunity to analyse the development of this concept within a non-elite body, operating outside the structure of formal education, and largely composed of working class youth. However, athleticism was but one impetus amongst many that can be discerned in how leaders and members conceptualised the role of football. It is argued that the rise of football in the Boys’ Brigade was motivated by a number of other concerns such as the supervision of members’ leisure time, ensuring proper regulation of sport, retaining members, and developing links with the organisation in other parts of Ireland.Less