Here in the US Midwest (Iowa to be exact) full-fledged summer is now less than one week away. Okay, so most folks would probably say it already is summer. The kids are out of school, pools are open, farmer’s markets and arts festivals are packed with leisurely loungers, and it has already hit 90 degrees.…
Released in 2007, Pride — a historical sport film about “the first black swim team” — came out during the same time as similar films (Coach Carter (2005), Glory Road (2006), The Express (2008)) also focusing on relationships between race and sport. It also primarily focuses on one individual (Coach Jim Ellis, played by Terrence Howard) in telling the story of how…
Sandwiched between pop culture quizzes and cat videos, fitspirational images litter the internet. These fitspirational images combine pictures of fit-looking white women clad only in short spandex shorts, sports bra, tank top, and long pony-tail with short “just do it”-type taglines to purportedly provide fitness motivation while ushering in a new era for women and their bodies. Fitspirational…
by Adam Park If Floyd Mayweather, Jr. is to be reckoned among the greatest pugilists of all time, it is only because his predecessors did much of the learning for him. In other words, he’s good because others were good before him. But the sweet science has changed a great deal over the millennia. Though…
The Set-Up Men: Race, Culture, and Resistance in Black Baseball. By Sarah Trembanis. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2014. Pp. 240. Softcover. $35.00). Reviewed by Josh Howard. One of my favorite sports films growing up was The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings. It’s a comedy from 1976, featuring three major African-American Hollywood stars: Billy…
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…
Sport in American History 