Manning up: Thoughts on Sports, Sex, and Power A Lecture With Laurie Essig, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies, in conjunction with Mixed Signals 4:30PM Laurie Essig, assistant professor of sociology and womens and gender studies. In the U.S. at the end of the 19th century, sports developed to make men out of white, middle-class boys who were seen as soft because they no longer participated in manual labor. Sports also separated men from women and the disciplined from the dissolute, and reinforced a variety of hierarchies based on class, race, gender, and the body. Despite the more recent role of sports in a variety of projects meant to liberate us from the bodyfrom feminism to civil rightssports continue to play a central role in the production of sex and power. Image credit: Shaun El C. Leonardo, Bull in the Ring, 2008. Courtesy the artist and Praxis International Art, New York.
