Surfing history - Why History Matters

In this episode we discuss why history matters, who makes surfing history, in what forms surf history is produced (from the surf media and surf films to surf museums), and the uses of surfing history. We discuss Kevin Dawson's Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) and how Dawson adds to the historiography of Atlanic Africans, the West African slave trade and the African diasporia in the Americas, and African agency through aquatic practices such as swiming and surfing. We close off the episode by providing our take on why unsettling surf history is important for the production of knowledge about surfing’s pasts in the Global South. 

We also make reference to Kevin Dawson's essay "A brief histroy of surfing in Africa and disapora" in AfroSurf (Mami Wata, 2020), which was republished in the South African news site, the Daily Maverick. 

We received funding for podcast recording equipment from the Department of Women's and Gender Studies, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, at the University of the Western Cape, as part of the New Imaginaries for an Intersectional Critical Humanities Project on Gender and Sexual Justice, a project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Thanks to Christine King for our logo design.

Karen Graaff is a Research Fellow, Women's and Gender Studies, University of the Western Cape.

Glen Thompson is a Research Fellow, History Department, Stellenbosch University.