Muscle Works: Physical Culture and the Performance of Masculinity - Couverture souple

Chow, Broderick D.V.

 
9780810147362: Muscle Works: Physical Culture and the Performance of Masculinity

Synopsis

Men’s fitness as a performancefrom nineteenth-century theatrical exhibitions to health and wellness practices today

This book recounts the story of fitness culture from its beginnings as spectacles of strongmen, weightlifters, acrobats, and wrestlers to its legitimization in the twentieth-century in the form of competitive sports and health and wellness practices. Broderick D. V. Chow shows how these modes of display contribute to the construction and deconstruction of definitions of masculinity.

Attending to its theatrical origins, Chow argues for a more nuanced understanding of fitness culture, one informed by the legacies of self-described Strongest Man in the World Eugen Sandow and the history of fakery in strongman performance; the philosophy of weightlifter George Hackenschmidt and the performances of martial artist Bruce Lee; and the intersections of fatigue, resistance training, and whiteness. Muscle Works: Physical Culture and the Performance of Masculinity moves beyond the gym and across the archive, working out techniques, poses, and performances to consider how, as gendered subjects, we inhabit and make worlds through our bodies.

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À propos de l?auteur

BRODERICK D. V. CHOW is Reader and Director of Learning, Teaching and Inclusion at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. He is coeditor of the volumes Sports Plays (2022) and Performance and Professional Wrestling (2016), as well as a competitive Olympic weightlifter and British Weight Lifting qualified coach.

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Autres éditions populaires du même titre

9780810147379: Muscle Works: Physical Culture and the Performance of Masculinity

Edition présentée

ISBN 10 :  0810147378 ISBN 13 :  9780810147379
Editeur : Northwestern University Press, 2024
Couverture rigide