(MAY 27) Toronto, ON –
Fighting Women: A Symposium on Women’s Boxing is a two-day event
bringing together authors, academics, boxing scholars, coaches,
filmmakers, and journalists who chronicle women’s boxing. A
total of nineteen presenters from Canada, United States, Mexico,
Trinidad and Tobago, Finland, and Australia are taking part in
the first scholarly event dedicated to examining women’s
professional and amateur boxing, past and present.
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.
A public screening of The Boxing Girls of Kabul, followed by a Q
& A with Director, Ariel Nasr will take place at 5 pm on
Friday, June 21. In this feature documentary, a remarkable group
of young Afghan women dream of representing their country as
boxers at the Olympics, and embark on a journey of both personal
and political transformation.
About Fighting Women: A Symposium on Women’s Boxing
Fighting Women is an event hosted by Brock University and will
be held June 21-22, 2013 at The Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen St
W., Toronto.
The symposium is organized by Dr. Cathy van Ingen, Brock
University, Canada; Dr. Benita Heiskanen, Turku Institute for
Advanced Studies, Finland; and Dr. Anju Reejhsinghani,
University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, U.S.A.
Contact
To learn more about the Fighting Women: A Symposium on Women’s
Boxing, please contact:
Cathy van Ingen, PhD
Associate Professor
Kinesiology
Brock University
(416) 845.0755
cathy.vaningen@brocku.ca
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