Sports, Power, and Resistance: An Introduction to Critical Sports Studies - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252089618 ISBN 13: 9780252089619

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2026

Synopsis

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

About this title

About the Authors

Thomas P. Oates is a professor in the Department of American Studies and School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Football and Manliness: An Unauthorized Feminist Account of the NFL.

Travis Vogan is a professor in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication and Department of American Studies at the University of Iowa. He is the author of LeRoy Neiman: The Life of America's Most Beloved and Belittled Artist.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0252089618
• ISBN 13: 9780252089619
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 264
• Editor: Thomas P. Oates, Travis Vogan