By Lindsay Parks Pieper and Andrew D. Linden What is the purpose of sport history? What role do sport historians play in the academy, the community, and the larger culture? What questions as an organization should the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH) attempt to answer? Last weekend, in sunny (and hot) Miami, Florida,…
By Wesley R. Bishop and Andrew McGregor The smoke and ash of Baltimore has cleared in the magical land of cable news. With protests in Cleveland underway, the short attention span of corporate media discourse has found another tragedy to focus on, with many talking heads treating yet another “isolated” incident of police brutality as…
This Fall I’m teaching a new course. I really enjoyed teaching the second half of the U.S. history survey last fall, so I’m thrilled to be back in the classroom. The class is called “The Black Athlete” and is a regular offering in the African-American Studies program here at Purdue. I’ve been assigned to teach it…
The cycle of national group bids to host the Olympic Games usually has not generated the type of openly negative discussion that occurred this year in the United States. From newspaper articles to blogs, to “Olbermann” on ESPN, Boston’s winning bid to represent the U.S. as a potential Summer Olympic site generated a firestorm of…
By Murry Nelson, Guest Contributor It was January 25, 1972, and Ohio State, the defending Big Ten champion and favorite to repeat was to play Minnesota in an early season match-up that some saw as a turning point for the remainder of the Big Ten season. It was, but not for the reasons that most…
by Adam Park For far too long, lamented Thomas Wentworth Higginson in 1858, “the saints have been ‘ashamed of their bodies.’”[1] For Higginson, Christians had failed to realize the interconnectedness between body and spirit. Christians needed something more physically robust. And as it so happened, America’s bourgeoning physical culture movement was ideal. Noting development…
A few weeks ago pictures of dead fish floating at the Rio 2016 rowing venue spread throughout the internet. Many in the sporting media used it as an opportunity to discuss (possible) issues of pollution at the games and to wonder if Rio would be prepared for the games (if you missed them, you can…
Whenever Chris Rock speaks, I listen [and then I usually laugh]. Rock is a comedic genius or the one comic who possesses the outstanding ability at least to disturb my good manners time and time again with belly-aching guffaws. He has thrived in his role as my generation’s most successful black humorist, plying his craft…
Sport in American History 