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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Transnational Gestures: Rethinking Trauma In U.S. War Fiction, Ruth A.H. Lahti
Transnational Gestures: Rethinking Trauma In U.S. War Fiction, Ruth A.H. Lahti
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation addresses the need to "world" our literary histories of U.S. war fiction, arguing that a transnational approach to this genre remaps on an enlarged scale the ethical implications of 20th and 21st century war writing. This study turns to representations of the human body to differently apprehend the ethical struggles of war fiction, thereby rethinking psychological and nationalist models of war trauma and developing a new method of reading the literature of war. To lay the ground for this analysis, I argue that the dominance of trauma theory in critical work on U.S. war fiction privileges the "authentic" …
Hands On Hips, Smiles On Lips! Gender, Race, And The Performance Of Spirit In Cheerleading, Laura Grindstaff, Emily West
Hands On Hips, Smiles On Lips! Gender, Race, And The Performance Of Spirit In Cheerleading, Laura Grindstaff, Emily West
Emily E. West
Cheerleading has long been synonymous with “spirit” because of its traditional sideline role in supporting school sports programs. In recent decades, however, cheerleading has become more athletic and competitive - even a sport in its own right. This paper is an ethnographic exploration of the emotional dimensions of cheerleading in light of these changes. We argue that spirit is a regulating but also flexible concept that is deployed in order to manage and uphold ideologies of emotion, and that these ideologies are central to how cheerleading reproduces racialized gender difference. On the one hand, the performance guidelines for spirit stabilize …
Cheerleading And The Gendered Politics Of Sport, Laura Grindstaff, Emily West
Cheerleading And The Gendered Politics Of Sport, Laura Grindstaff, Emily West
Emily E. West
Cheerleading occupies a contested space in American culture and a key point of controversy is whether it ought to be considered a sport. Drawing on interviews with college cheerleaders on coed squads as well as five years of fieldwork in various cheerleading sites, this paper examines the debate over cheerleading and sport in terms of its gender politics. The bid for sport status on the part of cheerleaders revolves around the desire for respect more than official recognition by athletic organizations; cheerleaders recognize the prestige associated with sport, a function of its historic association with hegemonic masculinity, and they claim …