Surfing as lifestyle, competitive sport, counter-culture, art, religion is a complex global practice shaped not only by Indigenous cultures but also by a history of colonization—spatial, cultural, and intellectual. Surfing constitutes one of the examples in which colonialism generated cultural appropriation and gave settlers—North Americans and Europeans—the power to rewrite surfing’s history and to gain linguistic, economic, cultural, political, ideological, and scholarly monopolies. The postcolonial culture of sport scholarship compels us to question the consensual myths, symbols, and representations of sport cultures. This session asks how can new fields of study, such as surf studies, deconstruct rooted histories built through colonial media and literature in order for sport scholarship to become a space of encounter, debate, and renewal between indigenous and colonizing institutions. The session ponders on ways to move surf scholars in new anti-oppressive and egalitarian directions in order to inform global sport scholarship.
Presenters: Lindsay Usher Nikolaus Dean Anne Barjolin-Smith
Friday November 8, 2019 4:35pm - 5:35pm EST
Spotswood Arms
