SHIFTING CURRENTS: A WORLD HISTORY OF SWIMMING (HB)

Shifting Currents is an original and comprehensive history of swimming. It examines the tension that arose when non-swimming northerners met African and Southeast Asian swimmers. Using archaeological, textual and art historical sources, Karen Eva Carr shows how the water simultaneously attracted and repelled these northerners - swimming seemed uncanny, related to witchcraft and sin. The history of swimming is a new lens through which to gain a clearer view of race, gender and power on a centuries-long scale.