Sports Matters: Race, Recreation, and Culture (Paperback)

~ John Bloom (Author), Michael Willard (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Frederick Douglass liked to say of West Indian boxer Peter Jackson that "Peter is doing a great deal with his fists to solve the Negro question." His comment reflects the possibilities for social transformation that he saw in the emerging modern sports culture. Indeed, as the twentieth century developed, sports have become an important cultural terrain over which various racial groups have contested, defined, and represented their racial, national, and inter-ethnic identities.

Sports Matters brings critical attention to the centrality of race within the politics and pleasures of the massive sports culture that developed in the U.S. during the past century and a half. The contributors collected here address such issues as popular representations of blacks in sports. They consider baseball—from Nisei players in Oregon to Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles. And they look at the use of warrior imagery in representations of Native American athletes and the evolution of black expressive style within basketball.

Sports Matters challenges our presumptions about sports, illuminating in the process the complexities of race and gender as they relate to popular culture.

Contributors include Amy Bass, John Bloom, Annie Gilbert Coleman, Gena Caponi, Montye Fuse, Randy Hanson, Michiko Hase, George Lipsitz, Keith Miller, Sharon O'Brien, Connie Razza, Sam Regalado, Greg Rodriguez, Julio Rodriguez, Michael Willard, and Henry Yu.

About the Author

John Bloom teaches American Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. He is the author of A House of Cards: Baseball Card Collecting and Popular Culture, and To Show What an Indian Can Do: Sports at Indian Boarding Schools. Michael Willard is co-editor of Generations of Youth: Youth Cultures and History in Twentieth Century America, also available from NYU Press.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: NYU Press (September 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814798829
• ISBN-13: 978-0814798829
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: No customer reviews yet. Be the first.
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,031,581 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)