For those of you participating in my 2016 academic reading challenge, I've got recommendations for U.S. sports history and ethnography, with special thanks to my friend, L.!
Let's start with some sports history. Going way, way back in the music archives, here's Kurtis Blow for my generation of sports' fans.
For a general overview of sports in American history, labor historian, Elliot Gorn and Warren Goldstein have updated their Brief History of American Sports, which begins with games played by the English colonists, and ends with chapters on debates about performance-enhancing drugs. If you are looking for a brief, readable survey written by historians, this might be a good starting point.
Anyone interested in the study of popular culture should read the Trinidadian Marxist, C.L. R James' book about cricket: Beyond a Boundary. The book is a collection of essays that explore colonialism and anti-colonial activism through the West Indian adoption and transformation of the English sport of cricket. It is one of those few outstanding books of cultural studies that captures cultural interaction and historical transformation through the deep study of some seemingly "unpolitical" cultural activity. Originally written in 1963, it connects West Indian cricketers to James' struggle to build a West Indies Federation at that time.
Since James' time, cultural studies scholars and historians have written a ton of interesting books that explore the roles of race, gender, and social class in the performance, practice, and spectacle of sports.
Jack Johnson was a Black American U.S. prize-fighter in the early 1900s, and his career has become symbolic of the obstacles Black athletes faced because of white racism. Because he dated white women, he was charged with the violation of "white slavery" laws. He's been the subject of more than one biographical study, including a documentary film by Ken Burns. My friend L highly recommends Theresa Rundstetler's biography: Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner: Boxing in the Shadow of the Global Color Line, which, as the title suggests, explores Johnson's travels to France, South and Central America, and Great Britain.
Katherine Mooney's Race Horse Men is another of L's recommendations for recent books. This study, by a historian from Louisiana State University in New Orleans, is about the development of American horse-racing through slavery and plantation society. The "Race Horse Men" of the title were enslaved men who became celebrities in the 19th century for their expertise with training and racing horses. This appears to be an excellent book giving insight into a surprising piece of the history of slavery in the United States.
Also about racing, with an emphasis on social class and regional culture is, Gwynneth Anne Thayer, Going to the Dogs: Greyhound Racing, Animal Activism and American Popular Culture.This book is part of an excellent American Studies series from the University of Kansas press, and tells the history of dog-racing, which began as an elite sport connected to the British aristocracy, and has become increasingly seedy and suspect in the present. This book bridges sports and animal studies.
On my own personal to-read shelf for this challenge because I'm a basketball fan, is Aram Goudsouzian's King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution, a biography of Celtics' player, Bill Russell, who was the first major African-American basketball star. This book provides a history of the sport of basketball and the NBA, and how it went from being a "Jewish game" in the 1920s and 1930s to an increasingly Black-identified game a generation after the Great Migration of African-Americans into Northern and Western cities. The reviews of the book also say it has great "white-hot game narratives,"and Gousouzian is an avid pick-up basketball player who loves the sport.
Another tempting sports biography is by feminist historian, Susan Ware. Game, Set, Match; Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women's Sports is likely to speak to a whole generation of (mostly white) girls who grew up watching Billie Jean King demonstrate what it meant to be a powerful woman. I know it's cheesy, but Helen Reddy and Billie Jean King go together in my childhood memories of the second wave era of feminism.
Jennifer Lansbury's book A Spectacular Leap is a history of great Black women athletes who were less often in the limelight than Black men or white women, starting with high-jumper, Alice Coachman and continuing with such greats as Althea Gibson and Jackie Joyner-Kersee, another 70s icon. whose sister-in-law, the famous Flo-Jo also features in the book.
*****
I know next to nothing about football. Looking at the Rutgers U. Press series on sport and society, I was intrigued by the description of Jeffrey Montez De Oca's book Discipline and Indulgence described by its reviewers as a blend of sociology and history to understand the relationship between the Cold War and college football.
Another sociological/historical account of a sport, is this book by softball mom and political scientist, Jennifer Ring. Stealing Bases gives a history of how baseball became a male sport, and where softball came from.
For Sports Ethnography:
I can't wait to read Lucia Trimbur's Come Out Swinging: The Changing World of Boxing at Gold's Gym, a recent book on men who box at Gleason's Gym. Trimbur, a sociologist, trained as a boxer at the gym, so this is an immersive as well as interview-based study that uses the window of the gym and the sport of boxing to understand transformations of race and gender in urban spaces.
Stanley Thangaraj's Desi Hoop Dreams: Pickup Basketball and the Making of American Masculinity is another book I've been looking forward to. Thangaraj's book explored the complicated dynamics of race and gender formation among South Asian men who play basketball in several different cities between the U.S. and Canada.
Michael Messner's It's All for the Kids is an ethnography of children's sports in the United States by a sociologist who's also a Soccer-dad. This book looks at the persistence of gender norms in sports, whether they apply to coaches, parents or kid athletes, as well as racial and class dynamics within the world of children's sports.
Sociologist and athlete Eric Anderson's book In the Game: Gay Athletes and the Cult of Masculinity tells the individual stories of Gay male athletes navigating the hyper-masculine world of sports through the lens of sociology. This book is also part of an academic press series on sports and society. This one is at SUNY press.
*** Maybe it's overplayed in this context, but this is a classic closer for a reason.
Let's start with some sports history. Going way, way back in the music archives, here's Kurtis Blow for my generation of sports' fans.
For a general overview of sports in American history, labor historian, Elliot Gorn and Warren Goldstein have updated their Brief History of American Sports, which begins with games played by the English colonists, and ends with chapters on debates about performance-enhancing drugs. If you are looking for a brief, readable survey written by historians, this might be a good starting point.
Anyone interested in the study of popular culture should read the Trinidadian Marxist, C.L. R James' book about cricket: Beyond a Boundary. The book is a collection of essays that explore colonialism and anti-colonial activism through the West Indian adoption and transformation of the English sport of cricket. It is one of those few outstanding books of cultural studies that captures cultural interaction and historical transformation through the deep study of some seemingly "unpolitical" cultural activity. Originally written in 1963, it connects West Indian cricketers to James' struggle to build a West Indies Federation at that time.
Since James' time, cultural studies scholars and historians have written a ton of interesting books that explore the roles of race, gender, and social class in the performance, practice, and spectacle of sports.
Jack Johnson was a Black American U.S. prize-fighter in the early 1900s, and his career has become symbolic of the obstacles Black athletes faced because of white racism. Because he dated white women, he was charged with the violation of "white slavery" laws. He's been the subject of more than one biographical study, including a documentary film by Ken Burns. My friend L highly recommends Theresa Rundstetler's biography: Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner: Boxing in the Shadow of the Global Color Line, which, as the title suggests, explores Johnson's travels to France, South and Central America, and Great Britain.
Katherine Mooney's Race Horse Men is another of L's recommendations for recent books. This study, by a historian from Louisiana State University in New Orleans, is about the development of American horse-racing through slavery and plantation society. The "Race Horse Men" of the title were enslaved men who became celebrities in the 19th century for their expertise with training and racing horses. This appears to be an excellent book giving insight into a surprising piece of the history of slavery in the United States.
Also about racing, with an emphasis on social class and regional culture is, Gwynneth Anne Thayer, Going to the Dogs: Greyhound Racing, Animal Activism and American Popular Culture.This book is part of an excellent American Studies series from the University of Kansas press, and tells the history of dog-racing, which began as an elite sport connected to the British aristocracy, and has become increasingly seedy and suspect in the present. This book bridges sports and animal studies.
On my own personal to-read shelf for this challenge because I'm a basketball fan, is Aram Goudsouzian's King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution, a biography of Celtics' player, Bill Russell, who was the first major African-American basketball star. This book provides a history of the sport of basketball and the NBA, and how it went from being a "Jewish game" in the 1920s and 1930s to an increasingly Black-identified game a generation after the Great Migration of African-Americans into Northern and Western cities. The reviews of the book also say it has great "white-hot game narratives,"and Gousouzian is an avid pick-up basketball player who loves the sport.
Another tempting sports biography is by feminist historian, Susan Ware. Game, Set, Match; Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women's Sports is likely to speak to a whole generation of (mostly white) girls who grew up watching Billie Jean King demonstrate what it meant to be a powerful woman. I know it's cheesy, but Helen Reddy and Billie Jean King go together in my childhood memories of the second wave era of feminism.
Jennifer Lansbury's book A Spectacular Leap is a history of great Black women athletes who were less often in the limelight than Black men or white women, starting with high-jumper, Alice Coachman and continuing with such greats as Althea Gibson and Jackie Joyner-Kersee, another 70s icon. whose sister-in-law, the famous Flo-Jo also features in the book.
I know next to nothing about football. Looking at the Rutgers U. Press series on sport and society, I was intrigued by the description of Jeffrey Montez De Oca's book Discipline and Indulgence described by its reviewers as a blend of sociology and history to understand the relationship between the Cold War and college football.
Another sociological/historical account of a sport, is this book by softball mom and political scientist, Jennifer Ring. Stealing Bases gives a history of how baseball became a male sport, and where softball came from.
For Sports Ethnography:
I can't wait to read Lucia Trimbur's Come Out Swinging: The Changing World of Boxing at Gold's Gym, a recent book on men who box at Gleason's Gym. Trimbur, a sociologist, trained as a boxer at the gym, so this is an immersive as well as interview-based study that uses the window of the gym and the sport of boxing to understand transformations of race and gender in urban spaces.
Stanley Thangaraj's Desi Hoop Dreams: Pickup Basketball and the Making of American Masculinity is another book I've been looking forward to. Thangaraj's book explored the complicated dynamics of race and gender formation among South Asian men who play basketball in several different cities between the U.S. and Canada.
Michael Messner's It's All for the Kids is an ethnography of children's sports in the United States by a sociologist who's also a Soccer-dad. This book looks at the persistence of gender norms in sports, whether they apply to coaches, parents or kid athletes, as well as racial and class dynamics within the world of children's sports.
Sociologist and athlete Eric Anderson's book In the Game: Gay Athletes and the Cult of Masculinity tells the individual stories of Gay male athletes navigating the hyper-masculine world of sports through the lens of sociology. This book is also part of an academic press series on sports and society. This one is at SUNY press.
*** Maybe it's overplayed in this context, but this is a classic closer for a reason.
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