New Books in Sports

Today we are joined by Dr. Shannon Walsh, Associate Professor of Theatre History, and author of Eugenics and Physical Culture Performance in the Progressive Era: Watch Whiteness Workout (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020). In our conversation, we discussed the origins of women’s physical culture in the United States, the role that physical culture reformers played in producing femininity and whiteness, and the possibilities for anti-racist and anti-sexist sport to reconceptualize the white supremist roots of American athleticism.In Eugenics and Physical Culture Performance in the Progressive Era, Walsh traces the beginnings of reform era physical culture, paying special attention to the way that physical culturists attempted to shape women’s bodies. She argues that their efforts hinged on using exercise to produce femininity and whiteness and that they prefigured the larger eugenic movements aimed at perpetuating the white race later in the 20th century. In each chapter she looks at different physical culturists or physical cultural movement. Her second chapter looks at Steele MacKaye and Americanised Delsarte, a physical cultural practice that combined acting, dance and exercise. Her third chapter focuses on Dudley Allen Sargent and mimetic workouts that introduced working class motions – for example wood chopping - to middle and upper-middle class men and women at Ivy League colleges.The fourth and fifth chapter work together to unpack the complicated position of women’s physical culture, femininity and motherhood. In chapter four, Walsh shows how Abby Shaw Mayhew and the YWCA articulated a genre of motherhood, which Walsh calls “social motherhood,” that reframed women’s exercise as domestic and maternal rather than grotesque and masculine. In the fifth chapter, Walsh examines Bernarr MacFadden – the Barnum of physical culture – to showcases the places where advertising, motherhood, and women’s exercise came into explicit contact.Relying on a close reading of physical culture through critical theory, these main chapters trace the intersections between exercise, femininity, motherhood, race and social class, to illustrate how debates over these issues helped to produce whiteness. Whether they were in elite educational institutions in the Northeast, Midwestern metropolises like Minneapolis, or travelling around the country these experts helped to code physical culture as specifically as womanly, middle class, white, and ultimately as unremarkable.He final body chapter, chapter six, looks at physical culture for indigenous women in three sites: the Odanah Mission School, the Model Indian School at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, and the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. Unlike their white counterparts, indigenous women were not offered significant opportunities for physical exercise and if they were it was only for the purpose of assimilation. Unsurprisingly, many indigenous girls and women challenged those expectations and were successful athletes.Keith Rathbone is a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He researches twentieth-century French social and cultural history. His book, entitled Sport and physical culture in Occupied France: Authoritarianism, agency, and everyday life, (Manchester University Press, 2022) examines physical education and sports in order to better understand civic life under the dual authoritarian systems of the German Occupation and the Vichy Regime. If you have a title to suggest for this podcast, please contact him at keith.rathbone@mq.edu.au and follow him at @keithrathbone on twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

Dr. Christopher Ives teaches in the area of Asian Religions at Stonehill College in Massachusetts. In his scholarship, he focuses on modern Zen ethics. In 2009 he published Imperial-Way Zen, a book on Buddhist social ethics in light of Zen nationalism. Currently he is engaged in research on Zen approaches to nature and Buddhist environmental ethics. He is the author of Zen on the Trail: Hiking as Pilgrimage, out now from Wisdom Publications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

With a reputation as the hot-air balloon capital of the world and the home of the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, the southwestern desert city of Albuquerque frequently showcases the magic and adventure of ballooning. This legacy links back to the 1880s and a man by the name of Park Van Tassel. Through his pioneering flight, Van Tassel not only opened the skies to future generations across New Mexico, but he also opened minds to the possibility of manned flight throughout the American West.A charismatic, P. T. Barnum–like showman, Van Tassel rose from obscurity to introduce the new science of ballooning and parachuting throughout the West. Van Tassel toured extensively—from California to Utah, Colorado, and Louisiana and later embarking on an international journey that took him to Hawaii, Australia, Southeast Asia, India, Africa, and beyond. Sky Rider: Park Van Tassel and the Rise of Ballooning in the West (U New Mexico Press, 2021) weaves together the many threads of Van Tassel’s extraordinary life journey, situating him at last in his rightful place among the prominent aerial exhibitionists of his time.Gary B. Fogel is an adjunct professor of aerospace engineering at San Diego State University and the CEO of Natural Selection, Inc. He is also the author or coauthor of Quest for Flight: John J. Montgomery and the Dawn of Aviation in the West and Wind and Wings: The History of Soaring in San Diego.Troy A. Hallsell is the 341st Missile Wing Historian at Malmstrom AFB, MT. The ideas expressed in this podcast do not represent the 341st Missile Wing, United States Air Force, or the Department of Defense. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

Sports fandom isn't what it used to be. Owners and executives increasingly count on the blind loyalty of their fans and too often act against the team's best interest. Intentionally tanking a season to get a high draft pick, scamming local governments to build cushy new stadiums, and actively subverting the players have become business as usual in professional sports. In Rethinking Fandom: How to Beat the Sports-Industrial Complex at Its Own Game (Belt Publishing, 2022), sportswriter (and lifelong sports fan) Craig Calcaterra argues that fans have more power than they realize to change how their teams behave. With his characteristic wit and piercing commentary, Calcaterra calls for a radical reexamination of what it means to be a fan in the twenty-first century.Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

The global success of football icons like Samuel Eto'o, Didier Drogba and Mohamed Salah has fuelled the migratory projects of countless young men across the African continent who dream of following - literally and figuratively - in their footsteps. Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic research, African Football Migration: Aspirations, Experiences and Trajectories (Manchester University Press, 2022) captures and chronicles the aspirations, experiences and trajectories of those pursuing this highly prized form of transnational migration. In doing so, the book’s three authors Dr. Paul Darby, Dr. James Esson, and Dr. Christian Ungruhe uncover and trace the myriad actors, networks and institutions that affect the ability of young people across the continent to realise social mobility through football's global production network.The book sheds critical light on the barriers to social mobility erected by neoliberal capitalism, and how these are negotiated by aspiring African footballers. It also generates original interdisciplinary perspectives on the complex interplay between structural forces and human agency, as young players navigate an industry rife with commercial speculation. While a select few reach the elite levels of the game and build a successful career overseas, the book vividly illustrates how for the vast majority, 'trying their luck' through football results in involuntary immobility in post-colonial Africa. These findings are complemented by rare empirical insights from transnational African migrants at the margins of the global football industry and those navigating precarious retirement from careers as players.African Football Migration offers essential coverage of why and how African youth and young men have become actors in the global football industry, revealing the complex implications of transnational mobility, both imagined and enacted.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.Unfortunately, Dr. Christian Ungruhe was unable to join this interview. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

From its early days as a sport to build “muscular Christianity” among young men flooding nineteenth-century cities to its position today as a global symbol of American culture, basketball has been a force in American society. It grew through high school gymnasiums, college pep rallies, and the fits and starts of professionalization. It was a playground game, an urban game, tied to all of the caricatures that were associated with urban culture. It struggled with integration and representations of race. Today, basketball’s influence seeps into film, music, dance, and fashion. Hoops tells the story of the reciprocal relationship between the sport and the society that received it.In Hoops: A Cultural History of Basketball in America (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021), Thomas Aiello presents the only contemporary cultural history of the sport from the street to the highest levels of professional mens and womens competition. He argues that the game has existed in a reciprocal relationship with the broader culture, both embodying conflicts over race, class, and gender and serving a s public theater for them. Aiello places cultural icons like Bill Russell, Michael Jordan, and Kobe Bryant in the context of their times and explores how the sport negotiated controversies and scandals. Hoops belongs on the bookshelf of every reader interested in the history of basketball, sports, race, urban life, and pop culture in America.Paul Knepper used to cover the Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book, The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All was published in 2020. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

Animals are both the focus of rodeo and its most invisible participants, argues University of Guelph history professor Susan Nance in Rodeo: An Animal History (U Oklahoma, 2020). Nance flips the usual script on rodeo history, focusing on the experiences of animals in rodeo's long history. Often that history is one of animals struggling to survive in a world that requires them but does not tend to their particular needs and desires. In telling this story, Nance turns rodeo, a sport often described as a triumphant expression of Western ruggedness into a story of human imperfection and stubbornness. This book tells the story of several individual animals, famous horses such as War Paint and Greasy Sal, to show the hidden side of rodeo and the animals that built the industry into a Western cultural icon. If historians are willing to consider every perspective, Nance argues, human histories became all the deeper and more honest by including their animal co-participants.Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

What is “binary nationalism” and what has it got to do with free-style skiing? The explosive popularity of Eileen Gu’s is an excellent case for understanding the common Chinese mindset. In this conversation, Professor Julie Yu-Wen Chen is joined by Professor Jiang Chang to discuss the wide popularity of freestyle skier Eileen Gu during and after the 2022 Winter Olympics. Jiang Chang will share his unique insight into Gu’s rise to a new kind of poster child in China, while at the same time, he cautions us to be mindful of the invisible hand (i.e., Chinese propaganda) in shaping Gu’s popularity.For most Chinese people, the primary framework for their perception and interpretation of the world is what Chang terms “binary nationalism.” It is nationalism, but it is very simple and is intended to be simple. In that framework, the US is the default opposite of China. Meanwhile, there has been an astonishing rise of a kind of “hero-worshiping” social atmosphere since Xi Jinping rose to power in China, where common people tend to resent elites but look up to those whom they know they could never ever surpass in status. This weird contradiction somehow paves the way for Gu’s popularity: She grew up in the US but chose to play for China in the Winter Olympics. Besides excelling in sports, she performs well educationally (which many Chinese people consider criteria for judging a person’s success in life), and she is beautiful by appearance. Gu has achieved so much that most Chinese people “heroize” her.Prof. Jiang Chang is a visiting professor of Chinese studies at the University of Helsinki. Chang is a famous media scholar and observer. He is widely published in English, Chinese, and French on topics that include journalism and propaganda, digital media cultures, and digital feminism in contemporary China. His representative works are published in leading journals such as International Journal of Cultural Studies, European Journal of Cultural Studies, and Journal of Contemporary China.Julie Yu-Wen Chen is professor of Chinese studies at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Dr. Chen serves as one of the editors of the Journal of Chinese Political Science (Springer, SSCI). Formerly, she was chair of the Nordic Association of China Studies (NACS) and editor-in-chief of Asian Ethnicity (Taylor & Francis). You can find her on the University of Helsinki Chinese Studies’ website, Youtube and Facebook, and her personal Twitter.The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo.We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dkTranscripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

Privilege at Play: Class, Race, Gender, and Golf in Mexico (Oxford University Press, 2019) is a book about inequalities, social hierarchies, and privilege in contemporary Mexico. Based on ethnographic research conducted in exclusive golf clubs and in-depth interviews with upper-middle-class and upper-class golfers, as well as working-class employees, Cerón-Anaya’s book focuses on the class, racial, and gender dynamics that underpin privilege. This study makes use of rich qualitative data to demonstrate how social hierarchies are relations reproduced through a multitude of everyday practices. The vast disparities between club members and workers, for example, are built on traditional class indicators, such as wealth, and on more subtle expressions of class, such as notions of fashion, sense of humour, perceptions about competition, and everyday oral interactions. The book incorporates race and gender perspectives into the study of inequalities, illustrating the multilayer condition of privilege. Although Mexicans commonly attributed racial relations a marginal role in the continuation of inequities, the book explains how affluent individuals frequently express racialized ideas to describe and justify the impoverished condition of workers. In doing so, Privilege at Play demonstrates the necessity of considering the role of racialized dynamics when studying social inequalities in Mexico. An analysis of gender relations shows how men maintain a dominant position over their fellow female golfers despite the similar upper-class origins of both male and female golf club members. This book pays particular attention to the spatial dynamics that reinforce social inequalities, arguing that the apparent triviality of space makes it a highly effective way to mark social inequalities and, hence, emphasise privilege.Rituparna Patgiri, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi. She has a PhD in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Her research interests lie in the areas of food, media, gender and the public. She is also one of the co-founders of Doing Sociology. Patgiri can be reached at @Rituparna37 on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

Rickson Gracie is one of the most fascinating professional athletes in the world. It is not hyperbole to call him a "living legend". A scion of a famed family of professional fighters, he was arguably the greatest Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practitioner of his time. He went on to fight professional mixed martial arts in Japan where he retired undefeated and achieved a level of fame that is difficult to imagine. Despite being born into an elite family in Rio de Janeiro and blessed with an incredible physique and striking good looks, Rickson Gracie has seen more than his share of difficulties. In Breathe: A Life in Flow, he reflects upon his life, including his father's unorthodox parenting decisions and how he overcame the horrific loss of his first-born son. Peter Maguire, who holds a PhD in history from Columbia University and has published several books on the Nuremberg trials and the Khmer Rouge genocide, has been a Jiu Jitsu student and friend of Rickson since the early 1990s. Together they co-authored, Breathe: A Life in Flow (Dey Street, 2021).Peter is a wonderful conversationalist and quite the storyteller. As we are both historians, surfers, and students of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and as well have both spent a fair amount of time in Cambodia and Hawai’i, I always enjoy any opportunity to chat with him. This podcast (Peter’s third appearance on the New Books Network) was no exception. We discussed the book, Rickson’s amazing life, and a range of other topics such as his interviews with survivors and perpetrators of the Khmer Rouge genocide, my brief modeling career, and the ways in which martial arts offers opportunities for personal growth.Peter Maguire is the author of several books, including of Law and War, Facing Death in Cambodia, and Thai Stick. Maguire has taught history, law, theory of war, and the history of surfing at Columbia University, Bard College, and University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He founded the Fainting Robin Foundation which provides financial support to independent scholars, writers, and thinkers whose work falls outside the mainstream. It is a scholar-led, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that rewards genuinely independent intellectual work.Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports