Physical culture and Irish modernity, 1893 to 1918

Abstract

ABSTRACTExamining the period 1893 to 1918, typically seen as the heyday of physical culture across the Western world, the current submission proposes three lines of enquiry. In the first instance, the paper explores notions of gender through the prism of physical culture as a leisure pursuit. In the second instance, the paper examines physical culture as a tool of modernity within the Irish workplace. Centring on the Guinness and Jacobs Factory physical culture teams and gymnastic classes, the paper seeks to understand the role physical culture played in the respective factory’s efforts to provide some form of leisure for their employees and their families. Finally, the paper examines the military nature of physical culture within Ireland. In examining Irish physical culture from 1893 to 1918, the paper thus examines physical culture as a technology of the self, through which individual and group identities were remade or reinforced through leisure activities.