Academic paper about figure skating | Golden Skate

Academic paper about figure skating

andromache

Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 23, 2014
So this semester I took an MA/PhD course on rhetoric, affect, and emotion, and I decided to write my seminar paper about figure skating, given the importance that affect and emotion seem to have upon how judges and fans evaluate performances within the sport. I used a combination of articles about competitions, theory, and my analysis of performances themselves (in which I have tried to be as unbiased as possible) to argue that affect and emotion have a great impact upon how we view figure skating performances. I've mentioned this paper in other topics, and I'm creating a topic here in the event that other posters would like to read my paper. If you send me a PM about it, I will happily share a link to my paper with you. I would also appreciate response/feedback to my paper in this thread.
 

FSGMT

Record Breaker
Joined
Sep 10, 2012
After having read your paper, I have to say that I got a very favourable impression: your analysis is really interesting, since it is always nice to look at a sport from an "intellectual" perspective. The text is well-written, too, with a plain and clear style and a good organization of the different pieces of information (even if I don't know what the requirements are). The aspects of the 2010 Nationals Ladies results that you highlighted were especially intriguing... :popcorn:
 

gkelly

Record Breaker
Joined
Jul 26, 2003
I like this argument:
Figure skating performances do not need to reflect balletic origins in order to be successful with judges and audiences; rather, I argue they must instead demonstrate an intentionality and precision of movement throughout the performance. I define intentionality and precision of movement in two parts: intentionality is both the movement’s contribution to the effect of the performance as a whole and the movement’s capacity for aesthetic value over practical value; precision of movement means that the movement is well-executed.

Useful for any discussion where fans (or judges for that matter) want to debate who is more "artistic."
 

andromache

Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 23, 2014
After having read your paper, I have to say that I got a very favourable impression: your analysis is really interesting, since it is always nice to look at a sport from an "intellectual" perspective. The text is well-written, too, with a plain and clear style and a good organization of the different pieces of information (even if I don't know what the requirements are). The aspects of the 2010 Nationals Ladies results that you highlighted were especially intriguing... :popcorn:

Interesting in what way? I decided to use this competition after coming across a NYT article (which I quoted) that was very unfavorable to Rachael's win. I watched it back in 2010 and didn't recall being outraged at the results, and wasn't involved in any online figure skating fandom at the time to really know how the results were received by fans--so my analysis was more far removed than, say, my analysis of the 2014 Sochi results (which I have an opinion on and tried not to let it bleed into my paper :p). Upon rewatching Rachael's and Mirai's performances, I was sort of surprised that Rachael's seemed to be received so poorly, because it was a clean program with decent choreography that she skated well. So I hope it wasn't unreasonable to argue that it was received worse than Mirai's due to purely aesthetic considerations.
 

FSGMT

Record Breaker
Joined
Sep 10, 2012
Interesting in what way? I decided to use this competition after coming across a NYT article (which I quoted) that was very unfavorable to Rachael's win. I watched it back in 2010 and didn't recall being outraged at the results, and wasn't involved in any online figure skating fandom at the time to really know how the results were received by fans--so my analysis was more far removed than, say, my analysis of the 2014 Sochi results (which I have an opinion on and tried not to let it bleed into my paper :p). Upon rewatching Rachael's and Mirai's performances, I was sort of surprised that Rachael's seemed to be received so poorly, because it was a clean program with decent choreography that she skated well. So I hope it wasn't unreasonable to argue that it was received worse than Mirai's due to purely aesthetic considerations.
I thought it was interesting because, not having watched the event live, I didn't have any perception of Mirai deserving to win over Rachel, but probably things were quite different from the point of view of those who were actually there, and the artistic side of things is certainly the most reasonable cause of the commentators' opinions (it is also interesting to note, however, that their PCS was almost equal)
 
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