Schultz, Jaime. Moments of Impact: Injury, Racialized Memory, and Reconciliation in College Football. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska, 2016. Pp. 216 + 25 photographs. $40.00 hardcover. Reviewed by Matt Follett Jaime Schultz’s Moments of Impact: Injury, Racialized Memory, and Reconciliation in College Football examines how college football, race, public history, and memory are interrelated by…
This post is a part of a new series, “Sport History Rewind.” In this series, contributors revisit and reevaluate important texts to determine the degree to which their analyses, arguments, research, and influence resonate in the field today. Of particular concern is how well the works fit into historiographical debates and compare with more recent…
During the 2016 annual meeting of the National Council on Public History (NCPH), I co-organized a working group on sport and public history with an emphasis on sport museums. This group discussed a lot of issues related to sport and public history, such as the question of audience uniqueness, the role of the body, gendered sport,…
Luke, Bob. Integrating the Orioles: Baseball and Race in Baltimore. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2016. Pp. 216. Notes and index. $29.95 paperback. Reviewed by Chuck Westmoreland Frank Robinson, the 1961 National League (NL) Most Valuable Player, arrived in Baltimore after the Cincinnati Reds made one of the most baffling trades in baseball history. From…
Fantastic Lies (2016). Directed by Marina Zenovich. Lightbox. ESPN Films. 103 minutes. Reviewed by Lindsay Parks Pieper My thoughts on the Duke Lacrosse case have changed. When news of the rape allegations first broke in March 2006, I was a junior at Virginia Tech and a member of the varsity lacrosse team. I immediately defended…
History is an important part of social justice, both concretely and conceptually. Concretely, as a topic of study, we can understand histories of oppression and institutionalization. Conceptually, we can explore processes of doing history and many ways to write/perform/embody them. We can grapple with the question what is sport history? In doing so, we can also think expansively and creatively about what sport history could be.
Gaines, Bob. Christy Mathewson, The Christian Gentleman: How One Man’s Faith and Fastball Forever Changed Baseball. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Pp. x+218. Illustrations, notes, appendices, works cited, and index. $38.00 hardback. Reviewed by Paul Putz Renowned for his pinpoint accuracy and his “fadeaway” pitch, Christy Mathewson’s baseball exploits are well known. He ended…
Nathan, Daniel A., ed. Rooting for the Home Team, Sport, Community and Identity, Champaign, University of Illinois Press, 2013. 237 pages, $25 paperback. Reviewed by Peter Marquis This review originally appeared in “Aesthetics of Theory in the Modern Era and Beyond /Photographie documentaire,” Transatlantica: revue d’études américaines 2 (2014). Reproduced with permission from Transatlantica and…
Gildea, Dennis. Hoop Crazy: The Lives of Clair Bee and Chip Hilton. Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2013. xx+322. Notes, bibliography, index, and appendices. $34.95 clothback. Reviewed by Russ Crawford Every basketball fanatic should read this book. Not because Hoop Crazy: The Lives of Clair Bee and Chip Hilton is well researched and written;…
Chudacoff, Howard P. Changing the Playbook: How Power, Profit, and Politics Transformed College Sports. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015. Pp. Xii+198. Notes and index. $95.00 clothback, $22.00 paperback. Reviewed by Alexander D. Hyres At the 1951 NCAA Convention, University of Pennsylvania athletic director Francis Murray observed, “This very dramatic part of our educational picture…
Sport in American History 