Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Free Play: Removing Barriers To Athletic Self-Expression In Sport, Matthew R. Waddell

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The choice of what sport to play and the manner in which a person plays it has moral content and represents values that are personally meaningful to the individual athlete. However, due to the hegemonic influence of the concept of fair play, athletes do not have control over, or freedom of expression within, their chosen sports. This has additional and harmful ramifications for those currently excluded from communities of sport practice because the rules of sporting contests have very little flexibility to allow for participant directed change. A rights-based conception of sport encourages athletes to engage in ‘civil disobedience’ within …

Construal Levels In The Context Of Sport Imagery And Performance, Celina S. Kacperski

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate what role abstract and concrete construal levels play in sport imagery and how they impact sport performance outcomes. Another major purpose was to provide an introduction to a new mixed methods data analysis approach and to apply the developed methodology in the context of a qualitative study investigating construal levels in sport imagery. Three studies were conducted with these purposes in mind.

The first study describes a mixed methods analysis of spontaneous sport imagery. 12 elite athletes participated in semi-structured interviews about their experiences with imagery before and during competitive events. Thematic …

The Acrobatic Body In Ancient Greek Society, Jonathan R. Vickers

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this thesis I collate the textual, artistic, and material evidence for acrobatics in sport and spectacle in Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic Greece, and analyze gymnastic performances with regard to their respective socio-cultural contexts. I develop the theoretical perspective that all body movement is socially qualified in order to demonstrate how the extreme manipulations of an acrobatic body carry particular social meaning: in sport, the male acrobatic body approaches superhumanism, and in spectacle the female acrobatic body approaches subhumanism. I argue, on the one hand, that men’s tumbling took place at the early Panathenaia festival in Athens, both in martial …