Scarsdale Adult School Catalog Fall/Winter 2024-25
Author Visit: Vicki Valosik, Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water (2024)
Popular Hollywood films of the 1940s and 50s helped earn women the right to swim freely for fun and fitness. Vicki Valosik traces a century of aquatic performance from circus acts to the Olympics, and brings to life the cast of characters whose swimming spectacles laid the groundwork for a new sport and changed women’s relationship with water. Once forbidden to swim alongside men or required to wear petticoats to hide their legs while wading, female swimming pioneers defied society’s rigid expectations of what was permissible for their sex. Far more than so-called “mermaid queens,” they ushered in sensible swimwear, developed life-saving swim instruction programs, reduced drowning rates, and turned synchronized swimming into a global sport showcasing women’s ambition, grace, and athleticism. Valosik will recount fascinating stories about the athletic joy of “fancy swimming” and why they remain significant today.
For an optimal experience, pair this course with “Swimming Lessons: Swimming and Aquatics in Popular Culture, Literature, and Life” (in-person Course 12713 or online Course 12843). VICKI VALOSIK is a writer, a synchronized swimmer, and an editorial director and writing instructor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Her work has appeared in publications such as the Atlantic , Smithsonian Magazine , and Slate . She holds an MA in Nonfiction Writing from Johns Hopkins University and an MA in Sociology from the University of South Alabama. LORI ROTSKOFF is a cultural historian, writer, educator, and public speaker specializing in memoirs and narrative nonfiction, childhood and youth, women’s and gender studies, and arts and culture. She studied history and literature at Northwestern University and earned a PhD in American Studies at Yale. Thursday, September 19 • 1:00pm-2:15pm • Zoom • Course 12816 • $30
www.ScarsdaleAdultSchool.org • (914) 723-2325
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