1st Edition

Women On Ice Feminist Responses to the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan Spectacle

Edited By Cynthia Baughman Copyright 1995

    The attack on Nancy Kerrigan at the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships set the stage for a Winter Olympics spectacle: Tonya versus Nancy. Women on Ice collects the writings of a diverse group of feminists who address and question our national obsession with Tonya and Nancy and what this tells us about perceptions of women in twentieth century America.

    I: Skating; 1: Nancy and Tonya and Sonja; 2: “A Radiant Smile from the Lovely Lady”; 3: Pure Desire; 4: What Tonya Harding Means to Me, or Images of Independent Female Power on Ice; 5: Fear of Falling; II: Pairs; 6: Viktor Petrenko's Mother-in-Law; 7: Tonya's Bad Boot, or, Go Figure; 8: Feminists on Thin Ice; 9: The Glass Slipper; III: Television Spectacles; 10: Tales of the Ice Princess and the Trash Queen; 11: A Skater is Being Beaten; 12: Cool Medium on Ice; 13: Narrative, Gender, and TV News; IV: Fantasies; 14: An American Tragedy; 15: Tonya, Nancy, and the Bodily Figuration of Social Class; 16: Tonya, Nancy, and the Dream Scheme; 17: The Olympics and Post-Cold War Femininities; 18: Dreaming of Tonya

    Biography

    Cynthia Baughman is Assistant Professor in the Department of Cinema and Photography at Ithaca College.

    "The soap opera from hell explained with a genderized twist." -- A Weekly
    "The contributors of Women on Ice, all aficionados of the forever up-and-coming academic discipline of cultural studies, scrutinize the Kerrigan-Harding wars in ways that have nothing to do with sports but everything to do with winners and losers in America." -- IN These Times, Dec.25, 1995
    "That these passages constitute bad writing is merely our opinion. It is arguable that anyone wanting to pursue an academic career should assiduously imitate such styles as are represented here. These are your role models." -- Philosophy and Literature
    "...most essays in this collection are are as intellectually agile, impudent and occasionally dazzling as one of Surya Bonaly's trademark backflips...There's also a nifty glossary of skating terms in the back of the book that'll be a must-have TV accessory for the next Olympics." -- Newsday, Sun.,Nov.19, 1995