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‘The Cradle of American Champions, Women Champions Swim Champions’: Charlotte Epstein, Gender and Jewish Identity, and the Physical Emancipation of Women in Aquatic Sports

2004; Routledge; Volume: 21; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09523360410001681957

1743-9035

Linda J. Borish,

Sport and Mega-Event Impacts

Charlotte Epstein advocated ardently for American women's competitive swimming and expanded swimming for women nationally and internationally in the early twentieth century. In her leadership as chair of the Athletic Branch of the National Women's Life Saving League (1913), and in battling the United States Olympic Committee to allow girls from the swim club she founded, the Women's Swimming Association of New York (1917), to compete in the 1920 Olympics, Epstein as an athlete and administrator advanced women's aquatic sports. This article explores the importance of Charlotte Epstein, an American Jewish woman, and the gender and ethnic contexts of her efforts in increasing women's participation in various swimming events. Epstein's ties with Jewish organizations such as the Young Women's Hebrew Association and the Maccabiah Games shaped her identity in aquatic sports. This analysis of Epstein's activism in swimming, such as in promoting swim races for suffrage and bathing-suit reform, illustrates her vital role in women's physical emancipation in the water and in American culture.