Messner, Michael A. and Musto, Michela. Child’s Play: Sport in Kids’ Worlds. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2016. Pp. 256. Notes, indexes, and appendices. $90, cloth, $29.95 paperback. Reviewed by Sam White Child’s Play: Sport in Kids’ Worlds is a welcome contribution to both the fields of Childhood Studies and Sport Studies. While primarily…
On Sunday, the Los Angeles Sparks will travel to Minnesota to take on the Lynx in Game 1 of the WNBA Finals. After defeating the Phoenix Mercury and Chicago Sky, respectively, each team goes into the finals looking to add another championship trophy to its team’s history. The Lynx are seeking their fourth championship since 2011,…
By Andrew D. Linden Amidst the ongoing Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in sport, highlighted by the recent protest led by San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, many writers, pundits, and editorialists have looked back at the cultural peak of the 1960s “revolt of the black athlete” (See here, here, and here.) Many of the…
Tonight, the Carolina Panthers will run onto the field at the Sports Authority Field at Mile High to take on the defending Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos. There are many on-the-field stories of interest. Can the Broncos continue their dominance from last season without the now retired quarterback Peyton Manning? How will Northwestern alum Trevor Siemian fare in…
By Thomas P. Oates, Guest Contributor I frequently teach about OJ Simpson’s public career. In fact, I have probably assigned Leola Johnson and David Roediger’s classic essay “Hertz, Don’t It: Becoming Colorless and Staying Black in the Crossover of O.J. Simpson” more often than any other reading. The authors interrogate Simpson’s purported “colorlessness,” arguing that…
By Russ Crawford After an indecisive first half in the Championship of the French National Challenge Féminin of American football, the persistent clouds and rain cleared and the big battalions began to assert their will, just as Napoleon’s columns had in 1805. It was the Argocanes of Aix-en-Provence, rather than the Russians and Austrians, who…
By Robert J. Lake Anyone for tennis? It’s that time of year again when our favourite racket sport suddenly re-emerges as a fashionable and engaging spectacle. While other sports, notably the popular North American team-games of football, basketball, hockey, and baseball, alongside their equivalents in Britain, notably soccer, rugby union, rugby league, and county cricket,…
By Daryl Leeworthy, Guest Contributor Today’s Fourth of July celebrations mark the 240th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence, that moment when it became necessary for “one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.” The effects of independence, and quite what the effects on social and cultural habit actually…
This post is a part of the 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 sport-related…
By Rwany Sibaja, Guest Contributor Last Friday, June 3rd, the United States Men’s National Team faced Colombia in the opening match of the 2016 Copa América at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California. This is a special edition of the tournament – the “Centenario” – commemorating the 100th anniversary of the world’s oldest continental soccer competition.…
Sport in American History 