Beyond the Cheers: Race As Spectacle in College Sport (Suny Series on Sport, Culture, and Social Relations) [Paperback]

C. Richard King (Author), Charles Fruehling Springwood (Contributor)

Book Description

Series: Suny Series on Sport, Culture, and Social Relations | Publication Date: May 31, 2001

Asses the ritualization and representation of racial difference associated with intercollegiate athletics.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Focusing on half-time performances, commercialized stagings, media coverage, public panics, and political protests, Beyond the Cheers offers an ethnography, history, and social critique of racial spectacles in college sport. King and Springwood argue that collegiate revenue producing sports are created as a spectacle, driven by a range of contradictory meanings and exploitative practices. While Native Americans are viewed largely as empty or distorted images and African Americans are seen as both shining stars and 'troubled delinquents,' White Americans remain constant as spectators, coaches, administrators, journalists, and athletes, producing and consuming college sport, performing and policing, but seemingly unmarked as racial subjects. In consuming these spectacles, American sports fans learn to embrace inflated, contradictory, and distorted renderings of racial difference and the history of race relations in America.

About the Author

C. Richard King is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Drake University. He is the author of Colonial Discourses, Collective Memories, and the Exhibition of Native American Cultures and Histories in the Contemporary United States. Charles Fruehling Springwood is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Illinois Wesleyan University. He is the author of Cooperstown to Dyersville: A Geography of Baseball Nostalgia.

Product Details

• Paperback: 226 pages
• Publisher: State University of New York Press (May 31, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0791450066
• ISBN-13: 978-0791450062
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,879,443 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Informative but DRY!, January 9, 2003

By 

James Tibensky (Wayne, Illinois United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beyond the Cheers: Race As Spectacle in College Sport (Suny Series on Sport, Culture, and Social Relations) (Paperback)

A great treatise on the relationship between America's love of sports and America's conflicted attitudes about race. But I can't imagine how the knowledgable authors could have written a book that is harder to read. They never use a simple word when a complex one will do; never go for short when long will do.

Don't read this book when you're sleepy, you'll never finish it. But if you are in a scholarly mode, you will learn a lot. I did.