Dr Andrew Thornton

Qualifications: PhD Telephone: +44 (0)20 8392 3642 Email Address: a.thornton@roehampton.ac.uk

Positions Held

January 2000 to present:
Senior Lecturer: Sociology and Cultural Studies of Sport and Leisure
Programme Convener, BA Sport, Leisure and Culture

1995-2000:
Part-time Lecturer: Sociology, Humanities and Physical Education
York University, University of Waterloo and Humber College (in Canada)

Background

My main research and teaching interests are concerned with social (in)equality as they are produced and transgressed in people’s experience of sport and popular culture. I teach undergraduate courses on Social Theory; The Body and Identity; Race, Racism and Sport and a graduate course on The Body, Sport and Representation. I teach students in ‘Sport Science’ whose main interests are not in cultural studies or sociology which strains the basics of any critical pedagogy to its limits. I have conducted critical ethnographies in mainstream and ‘alternative’ sport one of which was my doctoral thesis Ultimate Masculinities: An Ethnography of Power and Social Difference in Sport. One of the publications from this research interrogates ‘Ultimate Frisbee’ players’ claims to alterity. (‘Anyone can play this game.’ Ultimate Frisbee, Identity and Difference. In Belinda Wheaton (Ed.) Understanding Lifestyle Sports: Consumption, Identity and Difference.) I continue research the development of new and ‘alternative’ sport forms, like Parkourt and ‘Extreme Ironing. I am particularly interested in how race, gender, the body, identity and difference are implicated in the meanings and experiencing of sport and ‘popular’ culture. I have written and continue to do research on the significance of mainstream films blending of the imagery of the sporting body with the raced, gendered and sexualised body. (‘I Know Kung Fu’ The Sporting Body in Film. In Eileen Kennedy and Andrew Thornton (eds.) Leisure, Media and Visual Culture: Representations and Contestations.) And I’ve recently published research with Eileen Kennedy and Helen Pussard (in World Leisure Journal, Vol 48: 3, (2006)) that illustrates how the London 2012 bid process was itself a sport spectacle that worked to negate criticism and obscure contradictions in the rhetoric and promotion of the host city campaign.

Publications

(2008) Invited Paper: ‘High Anxiety? An exploration of the pedagogy of difference and the body in popular Hollywood film’ for Centre for Culture, Identity and Education (CCIE) at the University of British Columbia, Faculty of Education (August), .

(2008) Visibly Anxious: The Heroic-Sport Body in Film, in preparation.

Thornton. A. D., Kennedy, E., & Pussard, H (2006) Leap for London? Investigating the affective power of sport spectacle. , World Leisure, 48, 6-21.

Thornton, A.D., Kennedy, E. & Pussard, H. (2005) Conference Paper: Leap for London? Investigating the affective power of sport spectacle. International Review for the Sociology of Sport (October 2005)., .

(2005) Conference Paper: The Not-so-Fantastic Four? The Sporting body in film North American Society for the Sociology of Sport: Annual Meeting., .

Thornton, A.D.& Kennedy, E. (2004) ‘Editors' Introduction’ In Eileen Kennedy and Andrew Thornton (eds.) Leisure, Media and Visual Culture: Representations and Contestations. Leisure Studies Association: Eastbourne (UK) , , v - x.

(2004) ‘I Know Kung Fu’ The Sporting Body in Film. In: Leisure, Media and Culture: Representations and Contestations. Leisure Studies Association: Eastbourne (UK),, , 41-60..

(2004) 'Anyone can play this game.’ Ultimate Frisbee, Identity and Difference. in Belinda Wheaton (Ed.) Understanding Lifestyle Sports: Consumption, Identity and Difference, London: Routledge,, , 175-196..

Kennedy, E., Pussard, H. & Thornton, A. (2004) Invited paper for CRONEM seminar series (University of Surrey): Investigating the Sport Spectacle in an Era of Post-Nationalism , .

& Thornton, A.D. (2004) Leisure, Media and Visual Culture: Representations and Contestations. Leisure Studies Association, Eastbourne (UK). Leisure Studies Associatin Publications., .

(2003) Conference Paper: ‘I Know Kung Fu’ The Sporting Body in Popular Film for Leisure and Visual Culture: Annual Conference of the Leisure Studies Association., .

(2002) ‘Race’, Sport and British Society. Ben Carrington and Ian McDonald (eds.) (2001) London: Routledge. International Review for Sociology of Sport,, , 37 (1), 114-116..

(2002) Driving the Lane Against the Raptor:The Prod. & Racialization of (transgressive) Subs. on the Streets of Toronto: In Ralph C.Wilcox, David L. Andrews, Robert Pitter & Richard Irwin, (eds.)., , 265-279..

(1996) Special Issue: Critical Perspectives on Anti-Racism, The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, Vol. 33.3 (August).

(1995) What's in a Name?: ‘Coaches’ in the Workplace, Technology Adjustment Research Project (CEP-TARP). For the Ontario Federation of Labour, Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. Toronto, Canada.

(1995) Whose Masculinities?: Theorizing, Ideology and Pleasure on the Ultimate Field, L. Christof Armbruster, Ursula Mueller & Marlene Stein-Hilbers (Eds.). New Horizons: Studying Genders and Gender Relations, Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 85-105.

(1993) Re-thinking the links: Sports, Schools and Violence, Violence in Schools: Schooling in Violence, Special Issue of ORBIT Magazine, Toronto: OISE Press, 22.

(1993) The Accomplishment of Masculinities: Men and Sports, Tony Haddad and Lawrence Lam (Eds.), Men and Masculinities: A Critical Anthology. Toronto: Canadian Scholar's Press, 149-175.

Research Projects Undertaken

Current Research:

The Sporting Body in Popular Film, Centre for Scientific and Cultural Research in Sport, Roehampton University.

Alternative to What? ‘New’ Sport(s) in the 21st Century. Centre for Scientific and Cultural Research in Sport, Roehampton University

Comparative Multiculturalism: Sport, Education and Society with Dr. Handel K Wright, (Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia), and Dr Richard Race, (Education, Roehampton University) and the Centre for Scientific and Cultural Research in Sport, Roehampton University

Prior Research Experience

Editorial Assistant (May 1995 - August 1996)
Supervisor, George Dei, Dept. of Sociology in Education (OISE). Primary responsibilities were as 'Special Assistant' to George Dei and Agnes Calliste (Guest Editors) The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, Special Issue: Critical Perspectives on Anti-Racism.

Working-Class Learning Strategies (May - August 1994)
Supervisor: D. W. Livingstone, Department of Sociology in Education, OISE.

Social Relations of Sport, Gender and Culture
(September 1993 - April 1994 O.I.S.E., Department of Sociology in Education.)
Supervisor: Professor W.G. West. Department of Sociology in Education, OISE.


The Informal Education of Pre-adolescents in Sport(s) (October 1991 - April 199) O.I.S.E., Department of Sociology in Education.