Fighting Women: A Symposium on Women’s Boxing
June 21-22, 2013
The Art Bar, Gladstone Hotel
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Hosted by Brock University
The legacy of women’s boxing, including women fighting for financial gain, traces back to the first half of the 18th century. Yet women’s amateur boxing only became legalized in many parts of the Americas in the 1990s. There are now over 120 international boxing federations with registered female competitors, and the debut of women’s boxing at the London Olympics placed it on an international stage.
This two-day symposium seeks to explore the diverse ways women have participated in amateur and professional boxing. The purpose will be to investigate women’s involvement in boxing in its broadest sense, from historical, ethnographic, cultural, and artistic perspectives. This cross-genre approach hopes to take into account the multiple, often intersecting, aspects of this exploitative and dysfunctional, yet equally compelling and beautiful, sport.
“Fighting Women” encourages presentations from diverse fields of study, including physical cultural studies, women and gender studies, history, media and communications, film studies, sociology, visual artists, and filmmakers, among others. Topics may include, but are certainly not limited to:
* Histories of Fighting Women
* Ethnographies and Oral Histories
* Cultural Representations
* Theoretical Discussions
* Identity Formation
* Visual/Artistic Expressions
* New Media and Social Networks
* Embodiment and Agency
Please email abstracts of 250 words for 30-minute presentations or visual/film exhibits together with a one-page CV including the author’s name, institutional affiliation and position, phone number, and postal and email addresses to fightingwomen.symposium@gmail.
Abstract Deadline: January 31, 2013. All submissions will be evaluated by the Program Committee and a preliminary program will be announced by February 15, 2013.
Visit the website at: www.fighting-women.com
Please contact Chair of the Program Committee, Dr. Cathy van Ingen (Brock University) with any questions at cathy.vaningen@brocku.ca
The Program Committee consists of:
Dr. Cathy van Ingen, Brock University, Canada.
Dr. Benita Heiskanen, Turku Institute for Advanced Studies, Finland.
Dr. Anju Reejhsinghani, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, U.S.A.
