*Shortlisted for the 2022 Lord Aberdare Literary Prize* This book is the first, full-length scholarly examination of British women’s involvement in equestrianism from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, as well as the corresponding transformations of gender, class, sport, and national identity in Britain and its Empire. It argues that women’s participation in horse sports transcended limitations of class and gender in Britain and highlights the democratic ethos that allowed anyone skilled enough to ride and hunt – from chimney-sweep to courtesan. Furthermore, women’s involvement in equestrianism reshaped ideals of race and reinforced imperial ideology at the zenith of the British Empire. Here, British women abandoned the sidesaddle – which they had been riding in for almost half a millennium – to ride astride like men, thus gaining complete equality on horseback. Yet female equestrians did not seek further emancipation in the form of political rights. This paradox – of achieving equality through sport but not through politics – shows how liberating sport was for women into the twentieth century. It brings into question what “emancipation” meant in practice to women in Britain from the eighteenth through twentieth centuries. This is fascinating reading for scholars of sports history, women's history, British history, and imperial history, as well as those interested in the broader social, gendered, and political histories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and for all equestrian enthusiasts.

New things are forgotten old things - this rediscovery of the past is especially important in horsemanship and equestrian sports. Despite advances in sciences and technology, the physiologies and psychologies of the two principal agents, the equid and the human, have undergone relatively few changes since horse domestication. The studies collected in this volume outline such essential and recurring challenges in equestrianism as gender issues, equine identification, the use of hyperflexion and groundwork in training, as well as many others, from prehistory to this day.

A richly illustrated exploration of fashion and its capacity for generating controversy and constructing social and individual identities Clothing matters. This basic axiom is both common sense and, in another way, radical. It is from this starting point that Michelle Liu Carriger elucidates the interconnected ways in which gender, sexuality, class, and race are created by the everyday act of getting dressed. Theatricality of the Closet: Fashion, Performance, and Subjectivity between Victorian Britain and Meiji Japan examines fashion and clothing controversies of the nineteenth century, drawing on performance theory to reveal how the apparently superficial or frivolous deeply affects the creation of identity. By interrogating a set of seemingly disparate examples from the same period but widely distant settings—Victorian Britain and Meiji-era Japan—Carriger disentangles how small, local, ordinary practices became enmeshed in a global fabric of cultural and material surfaces following the opening of trade between these nations in 1850. This richly illustrated book presents an array of media, from conservative newspapers and tabloids to ukiyo-e and early photography, that locate dress as a site where the individual and the social are interwoven, whether in the 1860s and 1870s or the twenty-first century.

This book discusses major discourses of performing sports within human rights. Research findings data demonstrate that sports is an inequitable field today that has the potential to be a social change agent. There is more discussion about rights violations and what the fields of sports can do to be more rights-respecting, but the discussions are at a surface, rather than analytic level for most sports organizations. In sports, culture and human rights, as an emerging field, it is important to develop well crafter theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical body of knowledge. There is an academic discipline of sport that showcases its interdisciplinary nature. Linking sport to the field of human rights will require theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical evolution in this new discipline. There are both organizational, environmental and individual factors associated within the nexus of sports, athletes and human rights. This book links together sports and human rights in a systematic and analytical way. It contains chapters that discuss human rights policies in performing sports, from both organizational and interpersonal perspectives. The book focuses on the benefits of sports and the human rights and safety challenges within the operations of sports organizations and their impact on individual players.

A critical analysis of women's participation in sports has not received the proper attention which it deserves from most of the Indian scholars. Men have played their dominant role in society as well as in sports which smacks of masculine superiority whereas women have been sidelined to lay a minor role. They were considered delicate, submissive and emotional. For these "clinging vine" creatures to compete in sports was unthinkable because they occupy a secondary status in Indian society. Moreover, society does not attach value to bring women into the sports field. The evidence of what the status of women was in the earliest history is found in the sacred Hindu texts, the Vedas namely Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Atharva Veda and Saam Veda. Each one of these texts is quite voluminous, the Rig Veda being the largest and the oldest. It is important to note that the hymns contained in these texts were composed by various eminent sages and during different time periods.

Sport and the Emancipation of European Women: the Struggle for Self-fulfilment explores the contributions of European women to the emancipation of women worldwide. It expands understanding of the need for their attitudes and actions and celebrates their achievements in freeing the female body from unwarranted political, cultural and social restraint in the courageous pursuit of the Enlightenment 's ' secular value system: ‘the unity of mankind and basic personal freedoms and {a} world of tolerance, knowledge, education and opportunity' (from Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World, 2004). The Collection records the pulling down of European barriers via sport to women’s realisation of ability and release of talent and their conquest of crushing inhibitions, inexcusable irrationality, intolerable prejudice and denial of opportunity : no barriers came down without confrontation. The struggle to overthrow prejudice set for the first time in the context of recent European history and the recent evolution of European sport, is described in this pioneering Collection. It is the first publication to focus specifically on European women and their struggle for emancipation via sport. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

First published in 1988. This study can be situated within the history of women, women’s education, women’s rights, sport, leisure and recreation. Its aim is not to establish or submit to review what is known or thought to be known about the Victorian world-view and woman’s place within it, but rather to investigate reactions against this view and the emergence of a counter-view through sport and exercise. An attempt is made to rescue the English sportswoman from the obscuring mists of the past, to discuss her as a transitional figure between opposing views of womanhood and to place her within the context of the general movement for the emancipation of women as an important effect and cause — without necessarily assuming what women’s status in sport and in society should have been.

Philadelphia sports—anchored by the Eagles, Flyers, Phillies, and 76ers—have a long, and sometimes tortured, history. Philly fans have booed more than their share and have earned a reputation as some of the most hostile in the country. They’ve been known, so the tales go, to jeer Santa Claus and cheer at the injury of an opposing player. Strangely though, much of America’s perception of Philadelphia sports has been shaped by a fictional figure: Rocky. The series of Hollywood films named after their title character has told and retold the Cinderella story of an underdog boxer rising up against long odds. One could plausibly make the argument that Rocky is Philadelphia’s most famous athlete. Beyond the major sports franchises and Rocky, lesser-known athletic competition in Philadelphia offers much to the interested observer. The city’s boxing culture, influence on Negro Leagues baseball, role in establishing interscholastic sport, and leadership in the rise of cricket all deserve and receive close investigation in this new collection. Philly Sports combines primary research and personal experiences—playing in the Palestra, scouting out the tombstones of the city’s best athletes, enjoying the fervor of a Philadelphia night with a local team in pursuit of a championship title. The essence of Philadelphia sport, and to a certain extent the city itself, is distilled here.