Eugenics and Physical Culture Performance in the Progressive Era: Watch Whiteness Workout 9783030587635, 9783030587642

This book strives to unmask the racial inequity at the root of the emergence of modern physical culture systems in the U

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English Pages [209] Year 2020

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Table of contents :
Acknowledgments
Contents
List of Figures
1 Introduction: Exorcising a Forgotten Physical Culture
Why Performance
Defining Physical Culture
Muscular Motherhood
Watching Whiteness
The Drive to Delineate Class
Sites of Exploration
Bibliography
2 Progressive Era Physical Culture and the Aesthetics of Whiteness
The European Schools: British, Swedish, and German Physical Training
Delsarte: “Too Rooted in Eternity to Negotiate with History”1
Delsarte’s Drawings
Progressive Era Physical Culture in the US: Governing the Strenuous Life
Eugenics and Whiteness in the Progressive Era
Americanization of the Systems
Americanized Delsarte: Classicism as Self-Culture
Conclusion: Americanized Delsarte Moves
Bibliography
3 Dudley Allen Sargent’s Classed and Classing Fitness: Nature, Science, and Mimetic Exercise
Dudley Allen Sargent: From the Farm to the Big Top to the Ivy League
Back to Nature: Romanticizing a Rural Past
Mimetic Exercises and Class Surrogation
Anthropometry: The Mean and Symmetry
Body-Builders: Producing the Reproducers
Conclusion: Habitus and Performance
Bibliography
4 “These Walls Could Not Contain Me”: Social Motherhood at the YWCA
The YWCA, Physical Culture, and Abby Mayhew
The Marvelous Miss Mayhew
Skirts, Bloomers, and Bicycles
Flailing Limbs and the Grotesque
Social Motherhood and Racial Fitness
Performativity and Security
Muscular Christianity for Ladies
Governing Through Self-Control: Mayhew’s Classes Perform
Conclusion: Do as I Say, Not as I Do
Bibliography
5 Racialized Surrogates in Bernarr Macfadden’s Physical Culture
Bernarr Macfadden: Weakling to Strongman
Physical Culture: Procreation and Motherhood
Culturing the Physical, Taming the Sexual
Before and After Photographs: Coming into Whiteness
Childbirth and Surrogates
Conclusion: Racial Reproductivity
Bibliography
6 Exercise for Assimilation: Physical Culture for Indigenous Girls and Women
Scene 1: Education for Extinction
Scene 2: Spectacle for Progressive Ends
Scene 3: Physical Culture by the Community, for the Community
Conclusion: Challenging Whiteness
Bibliography
7 Conclusion: Community Fitness for Social Change?
Bibliography
Index

Eugenics and Physical Culture Performance in the Progressive Era: Watch Whiteness Workout
 9783030587635, 9783030587642

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