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Linda K. Fuller, Editor. Sport, Rhetoric, and Gender: Historical Perspectives and Media Representations. NY: Palgrave
MacMillan: New York, 2006. Reviewed by Jay Baglia, Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network
Courses addressing the intersection of media and
gender are growing on Americas college campuses.
While earlier offerings in gender studies tended to focus
on communication styles or the psychosocial
developments inherent in gender roles, the emergence of a
focus on sports and media is an obvious and popular
development in this interdisciplinary area.
Fullers edited collection is a worthy complement to
preceding studies of gender, sports, and media, namely
Wenners (1989) Media, Sports, and Society, Messner and
Sabos (1990) Sport, Men, and the Gender Order:
Critical Feminist Perspectives., Creedans (1994) Women,
Media, and Sport, and Baker and Boyds (1997) Out of
Bounds: Sports, Media, and the Politics of Identity. In this
collection, Fuller divides the twenty-one offerings into six
sections: 1) language; 2) historical perspectives; 3) print
media; 4) broadcast media; 5) visual media; and 6) classic
case studies. To be clear, the chapters that make up these
sections do not all address media and yet each points to
mediated communication and the power of rhetorical
constructions. In addition to the twenty-one chapters,
there is also an introduction by the editor, which contains
a muscular bibliography. A variety of contexts and many
different sports are represented. Curiously absent from
this volume are womens competitive softball, golf, and
gymnastics. Likewise, I expected at least one chapter to
address the growing impact of womens coaching and
leadership.
The chapters that launch this collection including
the introduction appropriately address the role of
language, the phenomenon of competitiveness, and the
concept of hegemony in this critical arena of gender
studies. A series of historical treatments of sport and
gender follow and while I often find examination of a
particular historical figure interesting and relevant, the
analysis of the sportswriter Annie Laurie (One of
Americas First Sportswriters) lacked direction. I was
unclear whether this chapter was included purely for
historical context or as an exploration of gendered writing
in the male-dominated field. In either case, the author
cites only two of Lauries news stories. On the other hand,
Nancy Rosoffs look at how womens sportswear was
advertised in the decades before and after the fin de sicle
was revealing, demonstrating how emphasis moved from
fashion to function.
The next section Print Media Representations
contains five chapters and they demonstrate a varied
cross-section of topics. The chapter about the WNBA is
excellent as it reveals how news coverage of this growing
spectator sport both inhibited its early years and
contributes to its burgeoning appeal. While discourse
analysis is often the go-to method when considering
critical treatments in the field of gender studies, the
choice in this case is solid, for access is plentiful, the
Sport,
Rhetoric,
and
Gender:
Historical
Perspectives and Media Representations is available
from Palgrave MacMillan for $65.00 Hardcover, ISBN:
1403973283.
Reviewer Jay Baglia is a Medical Educator at the
Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network in
Allentown, PA.
Clara Sarmento, Editor. Eastwards/Westwards: Which Direction for Gender Studies in the 21st Century? Cambridge
University Press. Reviewed by Hsin-I Cheng, Santa Clara University
In recent years, voices of non-white, non-middleclass, and non-U.S./European women have been gradually
reclaimed (e.g., Behar and Gordon, Collins, Enloe,
Kaplan, Alarcn and Moallem, hooks, Mohanty, Moraga
and Anzalda, Ong, Shome, Spivak). Documenting the
shared struggles and triumphs among women across
nation-states remains a continuous project. Eastwards/
Westwards: Which Direction for Gender Studies in the
21st Century? surveys pressing issues on how language,
culture, and state apparati influence gender equality in the
globalized world.
This collection cogently calls for inclusion of those
whose voices have been neglected or even erased in
academic research. Conditions of womens lives in areas
such as India, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, China, and Southeast
Asia are discussed. In general, all seven chapters attempt
to unfold the structural effects of national constitutions,
religious doctrines, or linguistic practices on women. In
Construction and Reaffirmation of Social Gender
Stereotypes, and The Semiosis of the Feminine in
Bangla Language the authors interrogate the ways in
which women in India are linguistically located in a
binary system that excludes gender equality and
perpetuates authentic femininity. Such framing leaves
the unbalanced social space imbued with power-laden
ideologies unchallenged. Like India, which has undergone
significant socio-economic shifts in the past decades,
nations such as Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and China have
gone through their own transformations. Three chapters
Gender Equality in Ukraine, Culture and Language,
and Marriage in China as an Expression of a Changing
Society critique the impact on womens lives after
(inter)national statutes were materialized. Each briefly
discusses the conditions for women under the previous
political entity and illustrates the social, economic, or
political (in)congruencies that occurred during and after
these changes.
The final chapters in this anthology discuss texts
produced during the colonial and postcolonial eras in
Portuguese India and Southeast Asia. In The Other
Women and Language, Vol. 31, No. 2, Pg. 58
Susan Faludi, The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post 9/11 America. New York: Metropolitan Books; Henry Holt and
Company, 2007. Reviewed by Joey W. Pogue, Pittsburg State University - Kansas
It has been eight years since the tragedy of 9/11. In
The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post 9/11
America, Susan Faludi recognizes 9/11 as a great
moment of possibility which could turn the myths we
live by into progressive truths. Incorporating critiques of
media, the Bush administration, and patriarchal
mythology, Faludis examination of 9/11 as an
emasculation of America deconstructs Americas gender
order. According to Faludi, after 9/11, U.S. citizens
experienced a psychosomatic shock induced by the
awareness that neither America nor the heroic men in
charge of her protection were invincible. The terror she
identifies reflects a masculine powerlessness appearing in
a variety of forms political, economic, social and,
perhaps most alarmingly, sexual. The fantasy she
uncovers is pure masculine projection.
While feminism had become part of the mainstream
prior to 9/11, in the aftermath, the movement was
blatantly discredited. Spokespersons from the media
transformed independent women and feminine strength
into traitorous scapegoats. Encouraged by gatekeepers
who were pro-administration, pro-domesticity and
antifeminist, many Americans were invited to revisit a
Father-Knows-Best ideology reminiscent of the 1950s
Cold-War era. Any feminist voice attempting to explain
9/11 was quickly vilified. When Susan Sontag suggested
that a few shreds of historical awareness might help us
understand what had just happened (27), New York Post
columnist Rod Dreher retaliated that he wanted to walk
barefoot on broken glass across the Brooklyn Bridge, grab
[Sontag] by the neck, drag her down to ground zero and
force her to say that to the firefighters (27). Citing a
variety of publications, Faludi argues Drehers rant was
but one example of many sentiments that elevated to
new legitimacy the venting of longtime conservative
antifeminists who were accorded a far greater presence
after the attacks (22).
Echoing Sontag, Faludi characterizes response to the
tragedy as an old familiar pattern of Americas investment
in patriarchal virility. Her chapter The Cowboys of
Yesterday, notes the presss elevation of New Yorks
firefighters into idealized profiles of masculinity that the
firemen themselves found unrealistic. Such unrelenting
idealization was captured vividly in a CBS interview
when rookie firefighter Tony Benetatos was urged to
assert that 9/11 had turned him from a boy into a man.
Instead, staring back at the camera, he replied: Has it
made me a man? No. Whats a man? (73).
Focusing on the fiction of heroic patriarchy, Faludi
refers to history and frontier icon, Daniel Boone, who
said: Many heroic actions and chivalrous adventures are
related to me which exist only in the regions of fancy
(256). Like Boone, the firefighters shunned media
attempts to turn them into super human beings. When
Books in Brief: Editor Anita Taylors book notes on some interesting volumes, not all of them new,
that recently crossed the editors desk.
Historian Marilyn Yalom, A History of the Wife,
(Harper, 2002), looks at Judeo-Christian developments
and considers questions such as How did marriage
change from religious duty to a venue for personal
fulfillment? And if the original purpose of procreation has
been superceded, then for what? This book might be a
good companion piece to Stephanie Coontz recent book,
Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy or
How Love Conquered Marriage (Viking, 2005); and for
those who might be new to the subject, her older
publications on marriage and family life might be
instructive: The Way We Never Were: American Families
and the Nostalgia Trap (Basic Books, 1992), and The
Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American
Families, 1600-1900 (Verso, 1988).
If the subject of marriage is of interest, Germaine
Greer can still be relied on for a fresh take on previously
visited subjects. Note her 2008 Harper publication,
Shakespeares Wife, that works to place this married
couple in context and to bring Ann, the long ignored
farmers daughter, to life.
To learn more about both a marriage and a woman
too often overlooked as we think about our forebearers
among outspoken women, see Eve LaPlantes American
Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the
Woman Who Defied the Puritans (HarperOne, 2004).
Hutchinson also deserves a larger place both in histories