This dissertation brings an interdisciplinary methodology to bear on the rhetorical analysis of women's sport and health social movements in the twenty-first century. Specifically, I read "sports feminism" as a rhetorical discourse that engages ongoing feminist struggles for women's rights to both their bodies and public space. Drawing on transnational feminist rhetorics, I network sports feminist arguments to international policy documents, like the Brighton and Beijing Declarations, to illustrate how the topoi of sport, health, and fitness function as commonplaces in global gender mainstreaming policy. In applying the metaphor of the network to the communicative infrastructure of global sports feminist advocacy, I also draw on new media rhetorics to analyze the role of the wireless Internet and social networking in the rhetorical practice of networking sports feminist policy and arguments across transnational lines of difference. Yet, in reading the rhetorical practices of the Women's International Sports Movement and Nike's Girl Effect through transnational feminist rhetoric, I illustrate how sports feminism is neither a homogenous discourse nor singular feminist identity, and thus, must be analyzed as a pluralistic political praxis with competing rhetorical objectives and audiences. Thus, the final chapter situates sports feminist rhetoric locally in the context of US-based girl power media culture, analyzing the impact of sports feminist rhetoric on the embodied perceptions of gender and gender relations of adolescent American girls. The project thus demonstrates the importance of understanding sports feminist rhetoric's global sociopolitical and economic roles and its impact on gendered identity and labor in the twenty-first century.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/293613 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Wright, Cassie Anne |
| Contributors | McAllister, Ken, Baca, Damian, Fielder, Grace, McAllister, Ken |
| Publisher | The University of Arizona. |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text, Electronic Dissertation |
| Rights | Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. |
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