The Mountain and the Politics of Representation
Will be published approx. on 28. May 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
320 pages
978-1-80596-635-7 (ISBN)
Description
The stories we tell, published or otherwise, condition our mountain experiences in practice and reinforce cultural memory and representation. Yet, as this book and the authors within it set out to demonstrate, if we look beyond the boundaries of this 'singular white history' there is a rich diversity of stories to tell. This volume contributes to a growing body of scholarship that calls for a heterogeneity of voices in mountain memoir genres. For the first time, this diverse scholarship interrogates how mountaineering literary and media culture impact bodies, spaces, and places, in order to nuance how commodification intersects across social categories and is embodied in multi-dimensional ways. In this volume, we explore a burgeoning tradition of mountaineering literature, of cinema and of memoir to appreciate difference, beyond the habitual heroic, white male, adventurer that dominates screens and bookshelves. Through exploring multidimensional axes of social differentiation from gender, race, class, and age to dis/ability and sexuality, the book will demonstrate how commodification is embodied through representation in mountaineering literature, media, film and memoir in mountaineering spaces. Amongst our aims, this book intends to understand how multiple social dimensions overlap and work to produce independent systems of exclusion and inclusion that focus on untraditional ways to be a mountaineer.
Reviews / Votes
'This collection challenges the mainstream heterogeneous representation of white, male, heroic mountaineering endeavour and takes a wider perspective on the genre.... The Mountain and the Politics of Representation makes an original contribution by focusing on diversity within the traditional memoir category of mountain literature and media representation of mountaineering... Perhaps one of the most significant elements is the way it brings to the fore challenges and issues that continue to directly playout within the mountaineering and climbing community and media.' Emily Ankers, Leisure StudiesMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Liverpool
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-80596-635-7 (9781805966357)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Jenny Hall is Senior Lecturer in Tourism and Events at York Business School, York St John University. Martin Hall is Senior Lecturer and Course Leader for Film and Media Studies at York St John University.
Content
List of Figures Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements
Introduction Hall and Hall
Commodification and the Mountain 1. Fiona Mossman: Scripted Summits: Book History, Mountaineering, and the Experiences of Janet Adam Smith (1905-1999) 2. Martin Hall - Tommy Caldwell's The Push: Climbing, Edgework and Media Perceptions of Risk 3. David Lombard: Thinking with a Mountain: A Narratological and Rhetorical Analysis of the Haptic Sublime in Jon Krakauer's Mountaineering Memoirs
4. James N. Maples and Michael J. Bradley: Transforming the Dirtbag Label in Kentucky's Red River Gorge 5. Sarah Ives: Decolonizing Mountain Writing: Gender, Race, and the Mini-Memoirs of the Digital Age
Intersectional perspective of Mountaineering 6. Anandarup Biswas: Bengal's Encounter With the Himalaya: Mountaineering Beyond Conquest 7. Emma Gleadhill: 'Upon the whole I expect he took me for an aventuriere': British women Grand Tourists' accounts of mountains and mountaineering 8. Sarah Lonsdale: 'The Woman Business': Dorothy Pilley's Climbing Days 9. Agnieszka Kaczmarek: Wanda Rutkiewicz and Ewa Matuszewska: Deliberations on the auto/biographical 'Na jednej linie (On One Rope)' 10. Jenny Hall - Julie Tullis: Gender and the emotional labour of climbing the 'Mountain of Mountains'
Embodying The Mountain 11. Ben Garlick: The Total Mountain: Nan Shepherd and the Virtual Qualities of Landscape 12. Anna Holman: The Representation of Play in Joe Simpson's Touching the Void and Paratexts 13. Christopher Kocela: Walking Mountains: Zen practice and ecological awareness in Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard 14. Paul Gilchrist: Fatherhood, emotional (dis)entanglements and adventurous masculinities: Ben Fogle on Everest
Conclusion Hall and Hall
Introduction Hall and Hall
Commodification and the Mountain 1. Fiona Mossman: Scripted Summits: Book History, Mountaineering, and the Experiences of Janet Adam Smith (1905-1999) 2. Martin Hall - Tommy Caldwell's The Push: Climbing, Edgework and Media Perceptions of Risk 3. David Lombard: Thinking with a Mountain: A Narratological and Rhetorical Analysis of the Haptic Sublime in Jon Krakauer's Mountaineering Memoirs
4. James N. Maples and Michael J. Bradley: Transforming the Dirtbag Label in Kentucky's Red River Gorge 5. Sarah Ives: Decolonizing Mountain Writing: Gender, Race, and the Mini-Memoirs of the Digital Age
Intersectional perspective of Mountaineering 6. Anandarup Biswas: Bengal's Encounter With the Himalaya: Mountaineering Beyond Conquest 7. Emma Gleadhill: 'Upon the whole I expect he took me for an aventuriere': British women Grand Tourists' accounts of mountains and mountaineering 8. Sarah Lonsdale: 'The Woman Business': Dorothy Pilley's Climbing Days 9. Agnieszka Kaczmarek: Wanda Rutkiewicz and Ewa Matuszewska: Deliberations on the auto/biographical 'Na jednej linie (On One Rope)' 10. Jenny Hall - Julie Tullis: Gender and the emotional labour of climbing the 'Mountain of Mountains'
Embodying The Mountain 11. Ben Garlick: The Total Mountain: Nan Shepherd and the Virtual Qualities of Landscape 12. Anna Holman: The Representation of Play in Joe Simpson's Touching the Void and Paratexts 13. Christopher Kocela: Walking Mountains: Zen practice and ecological awareness in Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard 14. Paul Gilchrist: Fatherhood, emotional (dis)entanglements and adventurous masculinities: Ben Fogle on Everest
Conclusion Hall and Hall