Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Skiing into Modernity: A Cultural and Environmental History
ISBN: 9780520959897
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / University of California Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Skis and skiing -- Alps -- History; Skis and skiing -- Social aspects -- Alps; Tourism -- Alps -- History;

Skiing into Modernity is the story of how skiing moved from Europe's Scandinavian periphery to the mountains of central Europe, where it came to define the modern Alps and set the standard for skiing across the world.

Denning offers a fresh, sophisticated, and engaging cultural and environmental history of skiing that alters our understanding of the sport and reveals how leisure practices evolve in unison with our changing relationship to nature. Denning probes the modernist self-definition of Alpine skiers and the sport's historical appeal for individuals who sought to escape city strictures while achieving mastery of mountain environments through technology and speed--two central features distinguishing early twentieth-century cultures.

Skiing into Modernity surpasses existing literature on the history of skiing to explore intersections between work, tourism, leisure, development, environmental destruction, urbanism, and more.

Andrew Denning is a postdoctoral fellow in history at the University of British Columbia.