{"product_id":"shifting-currents-a-world-history-of-swimming-9781789145786","title":"Shifting Currents: A World History of Swimming","description":"\u003cb\u003eA deep dive into the history of aquatics that exposes centuries-old tensions of race, gender, and power at the root of many contemporary swimming controversies.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eShifting Currents\u003c\/i\u003e is an original and comprehensive history of swimming. It examines the tension that arose when non-swimming northerners met African and Southeast Asian swimmers. Using archaeological, textual, and art-historical sources, Karen Eva Carr shows how the water simultaneously attracted and repelled these northerners--swimming seemed uncanny, related to witchcraft and sin. Europeans used Africans' and Native Americans' swimming skills to justify enslaving them, but northerners also wanted to claim water's power for themselves. They imagined that swimming would bring them health and demonstrate their scientific modernity. As Carr reveals, this unresolved tension still sexualizes women's swimming and marginalizes Black and Indigenous swimmers today. Thus, the history of swimming offers a new lens through which to gain a clearer view of race, gender, and power on a centuries-long scale.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eKaren Eva Carr\u003c\/b\u003e is associate professor emerita in the Department of History at Portland State University. Her books include \u003ci\u003eVandals to Visigoths: Rural Settlement Patterns in Early Medieval Spain\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Reaktion Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50525760323858,"sku":"9781789145786","price":27.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_366ef674-97bc-448c-9c75-a92e573537ec.jpg?v=1731236385","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/shifting-currents-a-world-history-of-swimming-9781789145786","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}