Kristi Allain - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Kristi Allain

Journal of Canadian Studies, Mar 1, 2022

The Toronto Raptors’ 2019 National Basketball Association (NBA) championship win, a first for the... more The Toronto Raptors’ 2019 National Basketball Association (NBA) championship win, a first for the franchise and for a Canadian team, “turned hockey country into basketball nation” ( CBC Radio 2020 ). Canadians’ burgeoning embrace of the team and the sport seemed to point to a growing celebration of Blackness within the nation. However, we problematize the 2019 championship win to tell a more expansive story about how sport and national myths conceal truths about race and belonging in Canada. We explore two particular cases—the “We The North” campaign and the media coverage of Raptors superfan Nav Bhatia—to highlight the contradictory ways that the Raptors coverage mobilized symbols of the North and multiculturalism to present the team as quintessentially Canadian and rebrand basketball for Canadian audiences. We further explore how these stark contradictions manifest in the racialized policing of basketball courts in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). These cases demonstrate that the celebrations of the Raptors and basketball not only continued to police racialized bodies but also ensured that their inclusion was contingent on the maintenance of the status quo.

Journal of Gender Studies

Journal of Emerging Sport Studies

Renee Hess founded Black Girl Hockey Club in 2018 as a way to create a sense of community of Blac... more Renee Hess founded Black Girl Hockey Club in 2018 as a way to create a sense of community of Black women who identify as hockey fans. She currently works as the organization’s Executive Director and collaborates with its many committees organizing social, educational, and advocacy activities all centered around anti-racism. Outside of this role, Hess holds a Master’s degree in Literature and works as the Associate Director of Service Learning at La Sierra University in California. This text is a transcript and related commentary on Black Girl Hockey Club written by sociologist Kristi Allain based on her conversation with Hess about the importance of leaning into discomfort around committing to change, inauthentic displays of solidarity and progress, and the importance for Black women to feel a sense of joy and community among other like-minded folks when participating in hockey.

Communication & Sport

Elite-level women’s artistic gymnastics is (in)famous for the youth of its competitors. Yet if ag... more Elite-level women’s artistic gymnastics is (in)famous for the youth of its competitors. Yet if age representation constructs the limits and possibilities of sport, it is important to explore the effects of these representations. Here we examine media coverage of gymnast Oksana Chusovitina, who has competed internationally up to the age of 46. We conduct content analysis of 17 international competitions in which Chusovitina competed, from 2001 to 2018, exploring coverage of her and the younger gymnasts with whom she competed. As hegemonic masculinity structures a gender order in sport and beyond, we argue that gymnastics coverage constructs an age order in the sport by (1) emphasizing the exceptionality of older competitors; (2) focusing on athletes’ private lives; and (3) constructing the athlete-coach relationship as familial, where coaches are represented as surrogate parents. These techniques diminish the agency of young gymnasts and produce their youthfulness as hegemonic, treat...

TFW Maritimes, Jun 1, 2021

"Safe at Work, Unsafe at Home: COVID-19 and Temporary Foreign Workers in Prince Edward I... more "Safe at Work, Unsafe at Home: COVID-19 and Temporary Foreign Workers in Prince Edward Island" is the first report in a series of research projects by the Migrant Workers in the Canadian Maritimes partnership. Using desk research and 15 interviews with migrant workers to explore how COVID-19 has affected their health and safety, "Safe at Work, Unsafe at Home" reveals: Housing and workplace violations; unscrupulous staffing practices; overcrowded and inadequate housing conditions; lack of health coverage and medical insurance; and increased surveillance related to COVID-19 and decreased personal freedoms.

Journal of Canadian Studies, 2021

Journal of Aging Studies, 2020

This paper describes the direct measurements of the structure of iron-bearing liquids using a com... more This paper describes the direct measurements of the structure of iron-bearing liquids using a combination of containerless techniques and insitu high energy x-ray diffraction. These capabilities provide data that is important to help model and optimize processes such as smelting, steel making, and controlling slag chemistry. A successful programme of liquid studies has been undertaken and the Advanced Photon Source using these combined techniques which include the provision of gas mixing and the control of pO 2 and the changing influence of mixed valance elements. It is possible to combine rapid image acquisition with quenching of liquids to obtain the full diffraction patterns of deeply supercooled liquids and the metastable supercooled liquid regime, where the liquid structures and viscosity change most dramatically, can also be explored.

American Review of Canadian Studies, 2019

Sports media, athletes, and the public alike have framed Canadian professional men's hockey as an... more Sports media, athletes, and the public alike have framed Canadian professional men's hockey as an important symbol of the nation as a whole, while scholars have devoted considerable energy to pointing out that this celebrated hockey symbol tends to marginalize those in Canada who are not white, male, straight, and/or able-bodied. Yet various linguistic, racial, and ethnic minorities play and celebrate hockey in Canada, and indeed use hockey to express their own subordinated nationalisms. Their styles of play and the meanings they bring to the game have issued counter-hegemonic challenges to white, male, Anglo-Canadian hockey hegemony. Exploring the "hockey nationalisms" of Indigenous, Québécois, Acadian, and Central/Eastern European populations as case studies, this article argues for a reconsideration of Canadian hockey nationalism from below.

Sociology of Sport Journal, 2019

Curling was perhaps once the sport the least associated with discipline and athleticism, instead ... more Curling was perhaps once the sport the least associated with discipline and athleticism, instead having a reputation for drinking and smoking, an ethos prizing conviviality over competition, and a structure enabling amateurs to compete at the highest levels. However, during the gold-medal-winning performance of Team Brad Jacobs, a group of muscular young Canadian men, at the 2014 Winter Olympics, the public and media began celebrating changes in the sport that were already well under way. As curling enters a new era of rationalized training, fitness, and professionalization, this paper draws on interviews with older male curlers in two mid-size Canadian cities, and Ratele’s work on tradition, to ask what has been lost. Participants often embraced curling’s new emphasis on physical fitness. However, they also worried about the diminishing traditions of sociability, sportsmanship, and accessibility within the sport.

Ethnicities, 2019

This article offers an analysis of a business mentorship event in Fredericton, NB, which targeted... more This article offers an analysis of a business mentorship event in Fredericton, NB, which targeted immigrants sponsored through the New Brunswick Provincial Nominee Program (NBPNP)—an economic revitalization program designed to attract foreign business people and skilled workers to settle in the province. Applying Derrida’s concept of hospitality as a technology of whiteness, we examine the stated and implicitly understood expectations for the NBPNP, including the mechanisms at play for regulating newcomer’s behavior and comportment. We locate our analysis in the context of a regionally expressed Canadian multiculturalism, extending the relevance of our findings beyond Fredericton to Atlantic Canada. We ask: how do associated discourses of whiteness, multiculturalism and hospitality come into play to shape dynamics of power existing between hosts (settlement workers, various shadow state actors and mentor volunteers) and racialized newcomer guests? As a racialized threshold event, th...

Sociology of Sport Journal, 2008

The purpose of this article is to examine issues relating to desirable hockey masculinity and how... more The purpose of this article is to examine issues relating to desirable hockey masculinity and how they are played out within the Canadian Hockey League (CHL). My aim is to explore how the presentation/representation of hegemonic Canadian hockey masculinity within the CHL works to marginalize non-North American hockey players. I examine how gender is performed by the players, how the CHL as an institution supports dominant notions of gender, and how ideas about gender are taken up by the media. I draw from ten semistructured narrative interviews conducted with non-North American hockey players who competed in the CHL, as well as the scholarly literature, media representations and commentary on the game, supplemental interviews, and an examination of North American and international hockey policy.

International Journal of Canadian Studies, 2015

In this article, I examine the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's controversial hockey comme... more In this article, I examine the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's controversial hockey commentator Don Cherry and his weekly television segment on Hockey Night in Canada called Coach's Corner. Through a content analysis of three seasons of Coach's Corner (2006–07, 2007–08, 2008–09), I examine Cherry as a marker (and maker) of nostalgic remembering. The press and the public both revere and revile his performance of manliness, and the style of masculinity that he advocates, as a throwback to simpler days. For Cherry, these simpler times, which contrast with the idea of a current-day masculinity in crisis, privileged the “self-made man” who, through hard work, could make a way for himself in the world. In this article, I argue that Cherry's articulations of morality are linked to discourses of masculinity in crisis, taking the form of a nostalgic privileging of an anachronistic style of masculinity that locates an appropriate sense of masculine style within a particula...

Sociology of Sport Journal, 2016

The paper argues that the Canadian media’s representations of National Hockey League (NHL) player... more The paper argues that the Canadian media’s representations of National Hockey League (NHL) player Alexander Ovechkin work to locate Canadian national identity through its contrasts with the hockey superstar. Even though the press celebrates Ovechkin as a challenge to Cold War understandings of Soviet hockey players as lacking passion and heart as well as physical play, they also present Ovechkin as a ‘dirty’ hockey player who is wild and out of control. By assessing reports from two Canadian national newspapers, the Globe and Mail and the National Post, from 2009 to 2012, and comparing these documents to reports on two Cold War hockey contests, the 1972 Summit Series and the 1987 World Junior Hockey Championships, this article demonstrates how the Canadian media’s paradoxical representations of Ovechkin break with and rearticulate Cold War understandings of Russian/Soviet athletes. Furthermore, when the press characterizes Ovechkin and other Russian hockey players as wild, unpredict...

In this dissertation, I argue that the popular representation of Canada as a nation that plays ho... more In this dissertation, I argue that the popular representation of Canada as a nation that plays hockey, speaks to very particular ways that power is mobilized within constructions of Canadian national identity. This construction privileges particular understandings of gender and difference. Specifically, when hockey-playing men are placed at the centre of national identity construction, women and others who cannot or do not contribute to a sense of national identity in these same ways are positioned as peripheral to national myth making. In this work, I use three different but inter-related sets of data: in depth, semi-structured interviews with current and former elite-level hockey players; an analysis of Canadian newspaper coverage of Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin during the 2009 NHL playoffs; and, an analysis of three seasons of CBC’s Coach’s Corner starring Don Cherry. I found that the elite-level hockey players whom I interviewed and the media tend to understand appropriate Canadian-style hockey masculinity as focused on a rough, tough game, played by players who are well-mannered, articulate and who don’t play ‘dirty’. This style of play is frequently contrasted against other expressions of hockey masculinity, which are problematically understood as less masculine.

Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 2013

In this paper, I examine the process by which I conducted interviews with 19 young elite-level ic... more In this paper, I examine the process by which I conducted interviews with 19 young elite-level ice hockey players who competed or were competing in the Canadian Hockey League (CHL). I explore some of the methodological issues that arose while conducting these interviews and engaging with the various gatekeepers that facilitated my access to these interviewees. I relate these issues to the broader field of qualitative methodologies and specifically work that examines the challenges when a woman researcher conducts interviews with men. Through this analysis, I investigate the ways that men’s elite-level hockey structures itself as a closed community allowing outsiders only restricted access to the institution and its players. I also discuss some of the contradictions in the research process, particularly as they pertain to access to players and what they will disclose during the interviews. By focusing on the interview process, I study the ways that a specific style of masculinity (and to a lesser extent, femininity) is produced through the interviews. I argue that one of the ways that a particular gender dynamic is produced within North American men’s and boys’ elite-level hockey is by allowing women (and others not associated with elite-level hockey) only limited and guarded participation.

International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 2010

In this article, I will explore how Canadian national identity is constructed with regard to ice ... more In this article, I will explore how Canadian national identity is constructed with regard to ice hockey. National Hockey League (NHL) star, Sidney Crosby has been positioned as an important symbol of Canadian national identity. Given Crosby’s perceived importance, particularly within the Canadian media, I will examine how he is constructed as an appropriate model of Canadian masculinity and Canadian national identity. Crosby’s expressions of masculinity are not to be left to chance and for that reason there has been constant surveillance and critique of his expressions of masculinity. Interestingly, although the media tends to construct Crosby as a model of Canadian masculine identity, fans of the game (as well as some players and others in the media) frequently challenge this construction.

International Journal of Ageing and Later Life, 2019

The sport of curling, popular among older populations in Canada and conventionally imagined as a ... more The sport of curling, popular among older populations in Canada and conventionally imagined as a sport for older people, offers an important window into what it means to be an older man participating in sport. While researchers have extensively studied expressions of youthful masculinity in sport culture, scholarship about the confluence of gender expression and old age in sport is much rarer. Using Connell and Messerschmidt’s (2005) reconfiguration of hegemonic masculinity, and drawing on 19 interviews with older men who curl in mid-sized Canadian towns, we argue that later-life men negotiate complex models of appropriate masculinity that borrow from hegemonic exemplars available in earlier life, deploying certain forms of intellectual, class and gender privilege to do so. At the same time, they disrupt these hegemonies through an emphasis on interdependence, caring relationships and the acceptance of bodily limitations.

NORMA, 2017

This paper explores a shift in masculine sporting identities associated with the sport of curling... more This paper explores a shift in masculine sporting identities associated with the sport of curling in Canada. We argue that as curling has become increasingly professionalized, there has been a corresponding shift in representations of male curlers that valourizes youth, strength and aggression, in contrast to a previous emphasis on maturity and sportsmanship. After a review of the history and context of curling's popularity as a sport in Canada, we recount these representational shifts, drawing on official documents of curling associations and media coverage of the sport. At the same time, we suggest that extending conventional forms of sporting masculinity to curling sits uneasily beside new initiatives to encourage lifelong participation in sport. We draw on critical masculinity studies and sport studies to argue that age needs to be taken into account when mapping the diversity of masculinities. We further argue that sport is an important context for understanding complex intersections of age and gender, especially as physical activity is increasingly posited as essential to 'successful aging'. We suggest that curling provides an instructive and under-studied example of how these issues conjoin in constructing aging male embodiment, and suggest some directions for further study.