University of Illinois Press Sports, Power, and Resistance: An Introduction to Critical Sports Studies

Sports embodies and defines US culture while also shaping it and being shaped by it. Thomas P. Oates and Travis Vogan present essays focused on the intersections across sport, power, and resistance in the North American sports world. Topics range from Black coaches in the National Football League to disordered eating within distance running to transgender athletes' fight to participate in sports. The editors have organized the contributions into three sections. Part one probes how sports build communities that foster belonging as well as exclusion. The essays in part two explore multiple forms of resistance in sports through various performances and representations. In the final section, essayists analyze more explicit efforts to use sports as a platform for activism from various political viewpoints. Throughout, the works nurture and demonstrate a sensibility that encourages humanistic, critical, and interdisciplinary inquiry. Wide-reaching and accessible, Sports, Power, and Resistance explores timely issues while demonstrating the value of blending perspectives to better understand the games we play and watch. Contributors: Ali Bouterse, Adrian Burgos, Jr., Michael L. Butterworth, Noah Cohan, Douglas Hartmann, Victoria E. Johnson, Abraham I. Khan, Jason Kido Lopez, Theresa Runstedtler, Jaime Schultz, Samantha N. Sheppard, and Travers