Anne Bolin, professor of anthropology, presented papers at two recent conferences.
She presented “Embodied Ethnography: Seeing, Feelings and Knowledge among Competitive Bodybuilders,” at The Association for the Study of Play in Charleston, SC, Feb. 19-23. Her abstract describes the paper:
“This paper offers an example of ethnographic inquiry in the study of a sporting subculture, that of competitive bodybuilding. The focus is on a critical and self-aware anthropology that explores the shifting relations between objectivity and subjectivity in long-term ethnographic research among competitive bodybuilders. In pushing the boundaries of reflexive ethnography, consideration is given to the potential of an embodied knowledge acquired through somatic participation. This approach emphasizes the senses of ethnographer and collaborator in the creation and recreation of a bodybuilding and gym subculture. The physical and kinesthetic experience within bodybuilding subculture is a processual one that embeds a dynamic and complex habitus of meaning and knowledge. From this process, emerges an identity and aesthetic of bodybuilding. The implications of embodied knowledge for understanding bodybuilding as cultural phenomenon and the insights this has for anthropology are discussed.”
Bolin was also invited to present a paper, titled “Mapping Gender Ethnographically,” at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Conference on Transgender, held Sept. 20, 2002 in Atlanta. From the paper’s abstract: “The cross-cultural and historical record reveals a multiplicity of genders. In an effort to systematize and further refine our understandings of gender, I have classified gender variance into a five-form typology. This classification scheme is an effort to provide an initial framework for the study of gender variant phenomena from a nomothetic stance.”