Cirrus@Austlit

'During the third season of the national Australian Rules women’s competition (AFLW) in 2019, journalist and academic Kate O’Halloran hosted an AFLW themed radio show, Kick Like a Girl, on Melbourne’s independent radio station, Triple R. The show included a segment titled, Voices from the Stands, which was presented by writer and award-winning documentary maker, Kirby Fenwick. Fenwick interviewed fans at various AFLW matches during the season, asking what it was about the AFLW competition and women’s football that they loved. Recurring themes of fans highlighting feelings of now being considered welcome or safe at the game as well as sharing stories of having “come back” to football after being disillusioned or excluded by the culture of the men’s competition were common. These fan narratives highlight an emerging fan space in professional, women’s Australian Rules football that is counter to the men’s game. This paper seeks to analyse the narratives collected by Fenwick as well as additional fan writing that has emerged since the inception of the AFLW that challenges the portrayals of fandom and concepts of what and who a “real fan” is.' 

(Publication abstract)

'This paper will focus on the (dis)embodied experiences of three rape and incest survivors who were part of the creative arts and sports intervention program, Left / Write // Hook. It suggests their understanding of self is a lived and (dis)embodied space in which they can creatively and reflexively re-tell, re-claim, and re-story their experiences of disconnection and shame associated with their trauma. Left / Write // Hook combines two acts; writing to a prompt, followed by non-contact boxing. The program ran in 2020 as part of a University of Melbourne creativity and wellbeing research initiative, targeting female survivors of childhood sexual abuse and trauma. About the program, founder Donna Lyon says: “The attempt to give expression to hidden and silenced thoughts and memories came through the act of writing, then boxing, to embody and release the emotion”. This paper observes the way that the process of writing informs trauma, trauma informs writing, and the embodied act of boxing informs the movement of stored trauma in the body. This article incorporates personal writing which recounts the experiences of these participants.' 

(Publication abstract)

'This article approaches group fitness as a textual practice and site for creative writing research analysis. Through autoethnography and discourse analysis of cues from instructor DVDs, I demonstrate how choreographed barbell fitness classes appeal to people uprooted by personal and/or socio-economic upheavals. My treatment of uprootedness connects Hannah Arendt’s writings on twentieth-century totalitarianism with Simone Weil’s account of “the need for roots”. These I read in the context of moral philosopher Elizabeth Minnich’s call to revive Arendtian theory via attention to “the evils of banality”. The resulting reflections position group fitness as a practice that reflects and reinstates cultural attitudes. I also consider how analysis of group fitness can inform understanding of human responses to uprooting situations including 2020’s COVID-19 outbreaks and global financial challenges of the early twenty-first century. Observing that group fitness operates together with popular music, team sports, and fashion, I conclude by emphasising the need for ongoing critique of fitness alongside these and other ordinary-seeming aspects of our always-already unprecedented, never-normal lives.' 

(Publication abstract)

'While women are equally engaged in the practice of sport, is active participation enough to embed them within the cultural narrative of Australian sport? This article examines women’s cultural knowledge of sport, games, and physical activity represented in literature, especially memoir, creative fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.' (Publication abstract)

'This review surveys portrayals of Indigenous athletes in nineteenth century Victorian newspaper sports writing. The review considers limited yet revelatory knowledge of the extent of the contributions of Indigenous athletes across the period, particularly where it highlights positive and constructive framings of their participation. The survey employs textual analysis to further underline the value of the sporting press as a practical resource, specifically in the recovery of “lost” or “hidden” knowledge related to the Indigenous Australians in the Victorian sporting landscape of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century.' (Publication abstract)