Fighting Women: A Symposium on Women’s Boxing
June 21 & 22, 2013
The Art Bar, Gladstone Hotel
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Hosted by Brock University

The legacy of women’s boxing, including women fighting for financial gain,
traces back to the first half of the 18th century. Yet women’s amateur
boxing only became legalized in many parts of the Americas in the 1990s.
There are now over 120 international boxing federations with registered
female competitors, and the debut of women’s boxing at the London Olympics
placed it on an international stage.

This two-day symposium seeks to explore the diverse ways women have
participated in amateur and professional boxing. The purpose will be to
investigate women’s involvement in boxing in its broadest sense, from
historical, ethnographic, cultural, and artistic perspectives. This
cross-genre approach hopes to take into account the multiple, often
intersecting, aspects of this exploitative and dysfunctional, yet equally
compelling and beautiful, sport.

“Fighting Women” encourages presentations from diverse fields of study,
including physical cultural studies, women and gender studies, history,
media and communications, film studies, sociology, visual artists, and
filmmakers, among others. Topics may include, but are certainly not
limited to:

    Histories of Fighting Women
    Ethnographies and Oral Histories
    Cultural Representations
    Theoretical Discussions
    Identity Formation
    Visual/Artistic Expressions
    New Media and Social Networks
    Embodiment and Agency

Please email abstracts of 250 words for 30-minute presentations or
visual/film exhibits together with a one-page CV including the author’s
name, institutional affiliation and position, phone number, and postal and
email addresses to [log in to unmask]

Abstract Deadline: January 31, 2013. All submissions will be evaluated by
the Program Committee and a preliminary program will be announced by
February 15, 2013.

Please contact Chair of the Program Committee, Dr. Cathy van Ingen (Brock
University) with any questions at [log in to unmask]

The Program Committee consists of:
Dr. Cathy van Ingen, Brock University, Canada.
Dr. Benita Heiskanen, Turku Institute for Advanced Studies, Finland.
Dr. Anju Reejhsinghani, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, U.S.A.