By Colleen English Without World Cup or Olympic tournaments, many might not consider 2017 to be a significant year for women’s soccer (a sentence I write with full awareness that these kinds of things are rarely said about major men’s sports). Germany’s Olympic victory at the 2016 Games and the US women’s national team’s (USWNT)…
Building off of our recent series, The Life and Legacy of Muhammad Ali Blog Series, the Sport in American History blog is happy to announce a new series titled Title IX at 45. On June 23, President Richard Nixon signed into law the Educational Amendments Act of 1972, which included Title IX. This law, which…
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…
Smith, Ronald A. Wounded Lions: Joe Paterno, Jerry Sandusky, and the Crises in Penn State Athletics. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2016. Pp. xiii+259. Notes, index. $95.00 hardcover, $21.95 paperback. Reviewed by Colleen English Before I begin the review, I want to mention my ties to Penn State. For nearly a decade, as both…
On May 25-27, 1973, scholars gathered at Ohio State University’s Center for Tomorrow for the first North American Society for Sport History (NASSH) convention. The inaugural group was largely comprised of scholars with physical education backgrounds and an interest in sport history. Not surprisingly then, the first convention showcased thirty papers with ancient Greek athletics,…
By Colleen English In the 1960s and 1970s, Jerry Seltzer led his father’s invention, roller derby, to renewed success. Formerly a Depression Era endurance sport (I have discussed the early origins of roller derby here), roller derby became an entertainment spectacle that featured drama, feuds, and athletic talent. Journalist Jack Fincher credited Seltzer with making…
Enevold, Jessica, and Esther MacCallum-Stewart (Eds.). Game Love: Essays on Play and Affection. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015. Pp. ix+273. Notes, index. $40.00 paperback. Reviewed by Colleen English Game Love: Essays on Play and Affection is admittedly different than most of the books reviewed on this blog. Unlike much scholarship in sport studies, which focuses on…
Sport in American History 