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Tracing the Pioneers: Ballroom Dance Instructors and “Taxi-dance Girls” in Modern Chinese Leisure Sports

Zeng Guang Duan, Ying He, and Jian Gang Qiu

This research examines the introduction and development of ballroom dancing in Modern China, focusing on the cultural clashes, professional evolution, and survival strategies of pioneers like instructors and “Taxi-dance Girls.” It shows ballroom dancing epitomized tensions between Chinese traditions and Western modernity. The transformations of dancing and its pioneers provided insights into China’s socioeconomic transition, urbanization, and modernization. The shift from foreign to Chinese instructors reflected tensions between westernization and localization, as well as China’s cultural awakening. Case studies on instructors enabled nuanced analysis. As commodified entertainers, “Taxi-dance Girls” gained economic sustainability and social mobility through talents and gender charm, though their glamorized images provoked debates on gender relations. By exploring multifaceted roles and experiences of pioneers, this research enriches understanding of entertainment consumption, urban middle-class lifestyles, and Eastern-Western cultural integration in Modern China. It provides new historical materials and perspectives, unveiling complex interplay between cultural globalization and localization.

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Five Overtimes: The Habs and the Leafs in the 1951 Stanley Cup Finals

Tanya K. Jones, Olaf Stieglitz, John Wong, and Brett Anderson

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Sports Sprawl: Arlington Stadium and the Rise of Suburban Baseball Venues

Brian M. Ingrassia

Arlington Stadium in Arlington, Texas, originally opened as a minor-league stadium in 1965, but by 1972, it became home to the Texas Rangers of baseball’s American League. Although it was an architecturally undistinguished facility, Arlington Stadium shows how civic leaders in Arlington, alongside boosters in nearby Dallas and Fort Worth, utilized organized baseball’s legal doctrine of territorial rights to unify the metro area’s baseball market within a centrally located suburb. Quickly growing Arlington thus became home to a stadium that might one day host a big-league team, although in the meantime, it could host a minor-league team. This article tells the story of Arlington Stadium’s planning and construction, as well as the Rangers’ relocation from Washington, D.C., as a way to understand how a metro area used organized baseball’s idiosyncratic rules, based on a longstanding federal antitrust exemption, to build a suburban home for a major-league team.

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In the Mirror of the Past: A History of Women’s Football in the Republic of Turkey

Yavuz Demir and Salih Tiryaki

Football in Turkey has a framework that, by the discourses it generates in the social and cultural spheres, creates, and reinforces hegemonic masculinity. In Turkey, newspapers and magazines have produced discourses aimed at alienating women from football. Since the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, very few news articles about women playing football have been published in the newspapers and magazines, and those that have been published work to distance women from football. However, from 1960 onward, news about women’s football slowly began to find its place more frequently in newspapers. In this study, we assess the history of women’s football in the Republic of Turkey, which has a 100-year history, considering developments that ensued from the past to the present. Newspapers and magazines were analyzed to offer an interpretation of the development of women’s football in Turkey, as these media serve as important sources to comprehend how women were distanced from a field perceived as a bastion of hegemonic masculinity, such as football, in traditional societies. Despite the number of news articles about women’s football in Turkish newspapers increasing over the years, we conclude that women’s football did not progress over the course of a century in Turkey and still remains very much in the background.

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From Frozen Ponds to Organized Competitions: The Growth of Skating and Ice Hockey in Korea, 1886–1938

Kyoungho Park and Karam Lee

The encounter of American Protestant evangelicalism and Japanese imperialism formed in Korean society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries became a steppingstone for the acceptance of modern winter sports in Korea. In particular, skates introduced by American Protestant missionaries and the Young Men’s Christian Association formed an imaginary space to counter Japanese imperialism in Korea during Japanese colonial era. Ice hockey introduced along with skating is a representative product that evolved in this process. The history of the introduction of American ice hockey to Korea also had a dual imperial influence between the United States and Japan, and in another direction, there was a voluntary acceptance process by Koreans who recognized ice hockey as a modern product.

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Nature Sport and Environmental History: Adulation or Alteration of Nature?

PearlAnn Reichwein, Pierre-Olaf Schut, and Grégory Quin

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Volume 55 (2024): Issue 1 (May 2024): Special Issue: Nature Sport and Environmental History: Adulation or Alteration of Nature?

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Le Club Alpin Français et les Glénans: Préservation de la nature au sein des associations de loisirs sportifs françaises en alpinisme et nautisme, 1950–1990

Marion Philippe

Sports associations have a special relationship with natural landscapes. In the second half of the twentieth century, a number of organizations positioned themselves as defenders of the natural environment against the development of tourism and sports leisure facilities. They attempted to tackle the problem of over-equipment of natural areas. This research is based on a study of two outdoor institutions, the Centre Nautique des Glénans (CNG) and the Club Alpin Français (CAF). Despite their different pasts and proposed activities, both have been involved in landscape and environmental protection throughout their history. This can be seen in the way both associations integrate their facilities into the landscape, as well as in the work they do to raise their members’ awareness of environmental preservation as part of their sporting activities.

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Among the Athletes: The Actions of the Securitate in the “Sport Issue” (Romanian Title: Printre sportivi: acţiunile Securităţii în problema “Sport”)

Pompiliu-Nicolae Constantin

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“I Live With and By Nature”: Swedish Alpine Skiers Reflect on Professional and Lifestyle Skiing, Nature, and Snow, 1964–2023

Marie Larneby

Alpine skiing has been a popular activity since the 1950s. However, global warming leads to milder weather, melting glaciers, and reduced snowfall which deteriorates possibilities to skiing. The purpose of this paper is to sketch a contemporary history of alpine skiing and environmental awareness in Sweden through the narratives of ten alpine skiers. A temporal and spatial perspective contributes to make changes over time and meaning of places visible. The skiers share a fixed narrative: nature as central for skiing. This is not unproblematic since nature has been more adapted and modified and resulted in a crowded landscape. Nature is a space to be preserved but also as a space to enable skiing. In this constructed landscape, over time snowmaking is reconstructed to being normal, albeit not natural. A way to handle these changes is to care more for nature, travel less, ski more local, and show environmental awareness.