Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
This article analyzes black female student athletes’ participation in an elite
collegiate athletic program and shows how the program maximizes black female
participants’ athletic and academic potential through surveillance, control, and
discipline. The program instills in black female athletes a model of womanhood
whereby they come to expect and achieve academic and athletic success, but does
so at the expense of their autonomy and freedom from surveillance. Ultimately,
this analysis shows the promise and peril of panopticonics as educational
technology.
