Boxing, Narrative and Culture

Boxing, Narrative and Culture: Critical Perspectives is the first interdisciplinary response to the dominant boxing narratives that are produced, performed, and circulated in commercial boxing culture. This collection includes global perspectives on boxing. It highlights the diverse range of bodies and communities that engage with boxing practices but are oftentimes overlooked and overwritten by popular narrative tropes and misconceptions of the sport. These interdisciplinary and global perspectives engage with boxing's shared narrative resources, offering new readings and insights on how and what boxing performs and for whom. The contributors to this collection are academics, artists, amateur boxers, and/or coaches who provide a culture critique of boxing. The work shows how boxing practices are performed and channelled by individuals and communities who access and utilise boxing culture as a means of physical enquiry, political statement, and community building. These contributions challenge the notion that boxing is a sport reserved for masculine bodies adorned as heroes, warriors, or victims of the sport. Exploring key themes in socio-cultural studies including gender, race, community, media, and performance, this book is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in physical culture, sport studies, cultural studies, gender studies, cultural geography, critical race theory, labour studies, performance studies, or media studies.

Sarah Crews is a performance and media studies scholar and senior lecturer at the University of South Wales whose research centres on vectors of power as they relate to gender, activism, sport, and performance making practices. Sarah's recent research projects are concerned with how female boxers are represented in sport and popular media, and how their work challenges stereotypes of female bodies. Sarah is in the process of developing an archive of female contributions to Welsh boxing in collaboration with People's Collection Wales. P. Solomon Lennox is the head of the Department of Arts at Northumbria University. His research explores the relationships between physical performance practices, theories of performance space, and narrative identity. Solomon has published in the area of combat sports, specifically boxing. His work examines the connections between narrative tropes and physical performance practices. Solomon is currently developing work on the power of memetic performance, memetic haunting, and activism.

Introduction PART 1 Serious Athletes and the Politics of Community 1 Increasing Visibility and the (Re)presentation of Female Boxers in Print Media PAIGE SCHNEIDER 2 Influencer Boxing: Authenticity and the Quest for Redemption P. SOLOMON LENNOX 3 Ducking and Diving: Why Boxing Clubs Hit the Targets Other Sports Cannot Reach in Deprived Communities DAVID BARRETT, LEE EDMONDSON, ROBBIE MILLAR, AND P. SOLOMON LENNOX 4 Narratives of Struggle: Boxing, Gender, and Community SUPRIYA CHAUDHURI 5 Practicing Otherwise: Feminist Boxing Challenges Mainstream Narratives of Combat Sports ELISA VIRGILI 6 Reflections on the Empowerment of Women in Boxing from Athletes and Coaches in Norway Female Box ANNE TJØNNDAL PART 2 (De)constructing Self, to Be Somebody 7 Trans Boxing: A Boxing Club, an Art Project NOLAN HANSON AND ZAC EASTERLING 8 Katie Taylor: Complicating a Boxing Identity EMMA CALOW 9 Letting Down the Team? Individualism, Selfishness, and Kinship in Women's Boxing SARAH CREWS 10 Alfonso 'Mosquito' Zvenyika and the Dominant Narratives on Boxing in Post-Colonial Zimbabwe MANASE KUDZAI CHIWESHE AND GERALD DANDAH 11 Political Symbolism of Mary Kom from the Manipuri Autobiography to the Indian Blockbuster MYRIAM MELLOULI 12 Turn the Volume Up! Boxing Hearts and Beats KRISTÍNA ORSZÁGHOVÁ 13 Gender Transgression in the (Trans)National Domain: Laura Serrano and Women's Boxing in Mexico MARJOLEIN VAN BAVEL Afterword: Boxing and Cultural Value