Take a college course on the history of surfing
A new book by two UCSB professors distills down an unconventional class on the intersection of history and surfing
“The World in the Curl: An Unconventional History of Surfing” will make you look at towns like Pacifica, California, in a whole new light. Photo by Surfing magazine’s Peter Taras.
Ask anyone who lives more than 100 miles inland what their impression of a surfer is, and it’s likely based on movie characters such as Sean Pean’s Jeff Spicoli from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” Matt Adler’s Rick Kane from “The North Shore,” or even Patrick Swayze’s Bodhi from “Point Break.” In other words, surfers aren’t stereotypically known as being smart. But a new book by University of California at Santa Barbara professors Peter Neushul and Peter Westwick is hoping to change that stereotype by putting a historical spin on surfers and the sport they thrive on.
“The World in the Curl: An Unconventional History of Surfing” focuses on surfing’s progression from a Polynesian past-time to a billion-dollar global industry. Along the way, it shows how the sport was heavily shaped by the U.S. military, aerospace, and technological advances taking place during the same time period—and how without those influences, surfing as we know it would be dead in the water.
“The World in the Curl: An Unconventional History of Surfing” is on sale now.
If the premise seems a little bit overreaching or like something you might study in college—it’s because it is. The information in “The World in the Curl” was first taught as a course in the history department at UCSB. “The idea for this project came to the two of us on a sunny day of small surf at Cojo Point, north of Santa Barbara, as we sat in the water between waves and wondered how to combine our lifestyle with our profession,” say the authors in the book’s preface. “The immediate answer was to offer a course in the history of surfing at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where we both were teaching. … It was no surprise that on the first day of class we were inundated by students trying to enroll; what did surprise us was that most of them did not surf. Non-surfers clearly wanted to learn more about the cultural phenomenon of surfing. Since most people are not lucky enough to be college students living by the surf in Santa Barbara, we decided to bring the surf to them.”
Reading the book in light of this, it’s unsurprising to find chapter titles such as “War and Surfing” and “The Dark Side of Paradise: Race and Sex in Hawaii.” But, herein lies the genius of “The World in the Curl”—by setting up subjects that seem unrelated (ahem, “war” and “surfing”), an entirely new and complete history of surfing begins to take shape.
By using their knowledge of environmental and military history, Neushul and Westwick open new windows into key moments in surfing’s past. Even the saltiest of surf history nerds will feel enlightened reading about the pair’s take on Tom Blake’s “ah-hah” moments when designing a hollow surfboard, and Atom Bomb physicist and diver Hugh Bradner’s development of the first wetsuit.
If you’ve been ducking through waves your whole life, “The World in the Curl,” will open up everything you thought you knew about surfing and put a microscope on it. And, if you’ve never dipped your toes in the ocean, this is a great place to start getting wet. As the authors state, “This is a thinking person’s guide to surfing. Surfers are not just a curiosity, or cool subculture; rather, they are a way to see the history of the modern world.”
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