C.L. Cole and Feminist Cultural Studies in Sport: More Than Thirty Years of Resisting the Canon

Mirroring the “boom time” in women's sport (McLachlan, 2019), research on women's sport is also surging with ever more scholars studying a wider array of topics relating to girls’ and women's sport and physical activity and engaging a greater diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches. While I celebrate the multiplicity and diversity of scholarship on women's sport today, I worry that many of those writing into this current moment fail to fully acknowledge and appreciate the important feminist scholars who have been challenging the status quo for well over four decades. For those of us studying women's sport today, our scholarship is built on the shoulders of strong, courageous, and brilliant feminist scholars who worked so hard to challenge the patriarchal structures of sport, offering us theoretical and methodological tools to unpack the workings of power and its effects on the gendered body.

Long before researching women's sport was in vogue, critical feminist scholars such as C.L. Cole were disrupting the status quo in the field of sport sociology and cultural studies, offering new ways of thinking about the complex workings of power shaping women's opportunities to play and perform in sport, and the cultural reproduction of sport as a masculine terrain. In 1993, C.L. Cole published a field-defining essay, “Resisting the Canon: Feminist Cultural Studies, Sport, and Technologies of the Body” in the pages of this journal. The impact of this piece has been profound, clearly marking Cole as a “major visionary for the post-structuralist feminist studies move in sport” (Birrell, 2000, p. 69).

Perhaps giving the piece even greater notoriety at the time, leading feminist sport scholar Hall (1993) offered a response to Cole's piece. Hall saw value in Cole's dialogue between socialist-feminism, British cultural studies, and the work of Michel Foucault as offering “the theoretical underpinnings” for a “truly radical, gendered (and nonracist) theory of sport” (p. 99), but was less convinced—and articulated a series of concerns—about Cole's assertions of “what constitutes feminist cultural studies” (p. 99). Reading between these texts, the rigor of theoretical debates between feminist scholars of the time are palpable. Herein we get a clear sense of the robust “wrestling of the angels” over the future of feminist theorizing of sport and the body. But as the pioneer of British Cultural Studies Stuart Hall (1992) reminds us, “The only theory worth having is that which you have to fight off, not that which you speak with profound fluency” (p. 280). As evidenced in this exchange between Cole and Hall, feminist cultural studies of sport have a strong history of rigorous debate, revealing the deep passion and commitment of scholars to the project of theorizing gendered and embodied sporting relations. I would argue that the current “boom time” of research on women's sport would do well to “wrestle with the angels” a little more, and to engage more rigorously with past, present, and future questions of theory.

Cole's early engagement with Foucault was instrumental in sparking new ways of thinking about the gendered sporting body, and for a Foucauldian-turn in the field of sport sociology taken up by many other prominent scholars, including Andrews (2000), Markula-Denison and Pringle (2007), and many others in the years to come (see Cole et al., 2004). Indeed, Cole's work significantly shaped my own early research on the workings of power in women's snowboarding (Thorpe, 2008), and my later feminist engagements with physical cultural studies (Thorpe et al., 2011; Thorpe & Marfell, 2021).

Supervised by leading feminist sport sociologist and historian, Professor Susan Birrell, Cole and Birrell collaborated on a range of projects, including the edited book Women, Sport, Culture (1994a) that brought together 24 selections from various feminist positions to examine the relationship between sport and gender. The first of many to follow, the text served as an important marker of where feminist sport studies had been as a field as well as signposting what would go on to become some of most influential research questions and theoretical directions over the next three decades.

The topic of essentialist understandings of gender, and the problematic gender binary in sport, is gaining renewed attention, particularly as transwomen's participation in sport has become highly politicized and widely debated in both the media and academia (e.g., Greey & Lenskyj, 2022; Pape, 2019; Posbergh et al., 2024). Yet, through another significant collaboration with Susan Birrell, Cole made important early moves toward dislodging and disrupting binary assumptions in sport. Together, they offered a compelling analysis of the cultural meaning of Renee Richards, the trans tennis player who fought a legal battle to be allowed to play on the women's tour. This powerful analysis revealed sex categories as cultural constructions requiring high levels of work to maintain (Birrell & Cole, 1990, 1994b).

A few years later, Cole and Amy Hribar co-authored an important critical examination of Nike's “celebrity feminism” within the cultural and economic context of post-Fordism (Cole & Hribar, 1995). Again, this piece shaped my early research examining the gendered marketing strategies in the snowboarding industry in a post-Fordist Zeitgeist (Thorpe, 2011). Many others also took inspiration from this work, including Michelle Helstein's (2003) critical examination of representational images produced by Nike and directed to female consumers, with a focus on the politics and production of desire within Nike advertising. Recently, Posbergh et al. (2023) built upon Cole's earlier work in their analysis of the neoliberal postfeminist messaging in Nike's transnational advertisements for women. As exemplified by Cole, even when imagery and advertisements might evoke themes of emancipation and empowerment, we—as feminist cultural studies scholars—must work to contextualize media discourse, imagery and text within the cultural, political, and economic conditions of the times (also see Cole, 2000).

Importantly, Cole's feminist cultural studies also worked critically at the intersections of gender and race, though examinations of racialized masculinities of sporting celebrities such as Michael Jordan (Cole, 1996, 2001) and Magic Johnson (Cole & Denny, 1994). Through rich empirical analyses of Jordan and Nike's P.L.A.Y campaign, and mainstream media representation of Johnson's HIV announcement, Cole exposed deeply disturbing connections between sport, race, masculinity, national identity, corporate America, crime, punishment, and deviance during the 1990s. Cole (2014) also examined the gendered and racialised representations of “forgotten figures” such as track and field champion Chi Cheng. In so doing, they have long highlighted the importance of thinking sex, gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity together rather than apart, with their critical intersectional analyses always carefully contextualized within corporate and public imaginaries (Cole, 1989, 2007).

In so many ways, the highly original and critical questions Cole has been asking for more than three decades now, and the approaches used to articulate the complex workings of power in sport, have significantly shaped our field, and continue to do so. Of course, I am not alone in my acknowledgement of Cole's profound contributions to feminist theorizing of gender and sport, and thus I turned to some leading feminist scholars to also comment on Cole's impact on their own work and/or the field:

I first encountered C.L. Cole's work as a graduate student at the University of Iowa. They received their PhD from the school and their presence loomed large—at once inspirational and intimidating because of their brilliant scholarship. Their anthology, Women, Sport, and Culture (co-edited with Susan Birrell) fundamentally changed the way I looked at sport. And “Resisting the Canon: Feminist Cultural Studies, Sport, and Technologies of the Body,” knocked my academic socks off. It still does. Throughout their career, Cole has been at the forefront of important, ground-breaking research. Quite frankly, C.L. Cole is a pivotal figure and a luminary in the feminist cultural studies of sport. Professor Jaime Schultz, Pennsylvania State University, USA

C.L. Cole has made an invaluable contribution to understanding cultural developments at the nexus of sport, gender, the body and representation. Cole's diagnostic of the working of popular feminism in Nike advertising back in the ‘90 s was a profound influence on my own explorations of the discourses circulating around women's sport some 20 years later. Their work paved the way for subsequent investigations of the cultural representations and practices through which contemporary postfeminist sporting femininities are produced and negotiated under neoliberal capitalism. Associate Professor Kim Toffoletti, Deakin University, Australia

I remember coming across Cole's article ( 1993 ) Resisting the canon: Feminist cultural studies, sport, and technologies of the body in the Journal of Sport and Social Issues. I was doing my PhD and grappling with developing my theoretical understanding of the body as a site of cultural politics. In this paper Cole adeptly outlined the historical trajectories and theoretical intersections of past socialist-feminist theory, British cultural studies, as well as research within ‘sport sociology’ and more widely. Their focus was showing the importance of Michel Foucault's conceptualizations of power and knowledge, and how technologies of bodily production were essential in developing feminist cultural studies. While recognition of Foucault was not new, Cole's argument was nuanced and sophisticated. Rather than creating a straw person claiming the value of a particular theoretical approach (which has become a wider tendency over the decades) Cole's nuanced and historicized account recognizes the different and wide-ranging academic contributions to this project, in both the UK (where I was based) and the US. Cole's work has continued to be influential. Their article with Amy Hribar ( 1995 ) on Nike and celebrity feminism, which highlighted the complex and invisible dynamics that enable transnationals to exploit Third World women workers, was hugely influential, and for me was a go to in my teaching on consumer culture. Professor Belinda Wheaton, University of Waikato, New Zealand

In this current geopolitical conjuncture, it can feel challenging, risky even, to be doing intersectional feminist cultural studies of sport. But now is not the time to waver. I suggest we can find strength in reflecting upon the bold, smart, and fearless feminist scholars of sport and physical culture who have worked for decades before us, generously offering the next generations access to their robustly developed (and oft hotly debated) theoretical toolbox, exemplars of feminist praxis, and leadership in the field. For well over 30 years now, Cole has been showing us the way, paving a road for feminist cultural studies that is contextual, political, intersectional and responsive to the social, cultural, and economic conjuncture of our times.

Academic life can be a bruising business at times, and even more so when fighting for equity and justice within spaces (such as sport, the media, and academia) that continue to be strongly shaped by the powerful forces of patriarchy (including sexism and homophobia) and capitalism. Sometimes the politics of staying—holding space—even in the face of challenge, is a powerful form of feminist praxis in and of itself. As Editor of Journal of Sport and Social Issues for 25 years, Cole has demonstrated sustained feminist leadership in contributing to the growth and development of critical sport scholarship across the fields of sport sociology and cultural studies. Editing a journal is often largely thankless, thousands of hours of administration and communication (including chasing reviewers such as myself) each year, so now feels like the perfect opportunity to pause, reflect, and acknowledge C.L. Cole for such meaningful, impactful and generous contributions to the field over so many years. We are all the stronger for your leadership!