New Books in Sports

Today we are joined by William J. Morgan, Professor Emeritus at the University of Southern California, and the author of Sport and Moral Conflict: A Conventionalist Theory (Temple University Press, 2020). In our conversation, we discussed three theories of sports ethics (formalism, internalism/interpretivism, and conventionalism.) We looked at how sports philosophers use historical controversies as test cases for their philosophical theories, but also applied those philosophical approaches to contemporary sports issues including the use of performance enhancing drugs and the payment of college athletes.Sport and Moral Conflict takes sport as a moral laboratory and Morgan wrote it as an extended conversation between theories of sports ethics. Each chapter addresses a different sports philosophical theory: formalism, a broad internalism that centres metaphysical methods, a broad internalism that uses a discourse method, and finally a conventionalist ethical theory of sport. He also outlines what he calls the two duelling conceptions of sport in the early 20th century, an amateur world guided by British public school athletes and a professional world of American scientific sportsmen. These two different sporting conceptions, according to Morgan, shape much of the athletic debate the age. Understanding the different world views of these two schools provides for conventionalists a way of comprehending contemporary moral controversy in sport.The bulk of Morgan’s book is an extensive and fairhanded analysis of alternative theories of sports ethics; the depth of his investigation defies easy summary. He looks closely at formalism and internalism, offering appraisals of these theories that highlight both their successes and their failures. For example, formalists like Bernard Suits not only succeeded in developing very plausible definitions of sports, but in their emphasis on the written rules of sport, also failed to appropriately consider the rules beyond the written rules that guide competitive performances.A close look at a range of test cases allow Morgan to interrogate the different sports philosophy approaches. In 1887, a baserunner that crossed home plate, tackled and held down the catcher which allowed two other runners to score. Was this behaviour permissible, even if it was technically not a rule violation? A formalist approach would have difficulty in dealing with these kinds of rules violation; by contrast, internalists and conventionalists stress the subtextual rules that shape athletes’ behaviours. The baserunners in 1887 were called out.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

Several high-profile cases of sexual harassment and assault have helped the #MeToo movement in China continue to make impacts on a society that is highly controlled and surveilled. Most recently, tennis star Peng Shuai’s saga has accused former top Chinese Communist Party leader, Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault. Although Peng did not say that she is part of the #MeToo movement, her speaking out has given fresh impetus to the campaign.Joining us to talk to Julie Chen about the #MeToo movement in China is Dusica Ristivojević, Kone Foundation Bold Initiatives Senior Researcher at the University of Helsinki. Dušica works in the areas of interdisciplinary Chinese studies, media studies, and international relations. Recently, she published a co-authored journal article on the #MeToo movement in China. See Jing Xiong and Dušica Ristivojević (2021) #MeToo in China: How do the Voiceless Rise Up in an Authoritarian State? in Politics & Gender.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 Nordic Association of China Studies (NACS) and Editor-in-Chief of Asian Ethnicity (Taylor & Francis). You can find her on 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, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University.We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcastAbout NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

In 2016, amid an epidemic of police shootings of African Americans, the celebrated NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick began a series of quiet protests on the field, refusing to stand during the U.S. national anthem. By “taking a knee,” Kaepernick bravely joined a long tradition of American athletes making powerful political statements. This time, however, Kaepernick’s simple act spread like wildfire throughout American society, becoming the preeminent symbol of resistance to America’s persistent racial inequality.Critically acclaimed sports journalist and author of A People’s History of Sports in the United States, Dave Zirin chronicles “the Kaepernick effect” for the first time, through interviews with a broad cross-section of professional athletes across many different sports, college stars and high-powered athletic directors, and high school athletes and coaches. In each case, he uncovers the fascinating explanations and motivations behind a mass political movement in sports, through deeply personal and inspiring accounts of risk-taking, activism, and courage both on and off the field.A book about the politics of sport, and the impact of sports on politics, The Kaepernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World (New Press, 2021) is for anyone seeking to understand an essential dimension of the new movement for racial justice in America.Paul Knepper covered 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

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: Dante Stewart’s path through college and into his current graduate school, playing football for Clemson, why former college athletes need to advocate for current student players’ rights, why he chose to go into the seminary at Emery, his grandmother, and a discussion of Shoutin’ in The Fire: An American Epistle.Our guest is: Dante Stewart, who is a graduate student, writer, and speaker. His voice has been featured on CNN, The Washington Post, Christianity Today, Sojourners, The Witness: A Black Christian Collective, Comment Magazine, and more. As an up and coming voice, he writes and speaks into the areas of race, religion, and politics. He received his B.A. in Sociology from Clemson University. He is currently studying at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Ga. He is the author of Shoutin’ in The Fire: An American Epistle.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, co-producer of the Academic Life. She is a historian of women and gender.Listeners to this episode may also be interested in:--The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou, by Maya Angelou--The poem Kitchenette Building, by Gwendolyn Brooks--Cables to Rage, by Audre Lorde--Notes of a Native Son, by James Baldwin--The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin-- Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates--the Smithsonian Folkway’s recording of The World is Not A Pleasant Place to Be, by Nikki Giovanni--Salvation: Black People and Love, by bell hooks--What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction, by Toni Morrison--Breathe: A Letter To My Sons, by Imani Perry-- Dante Stewart’s articles referenced in this episode can be found here--The Candler School of Theology at Emory University: http://candler.emory.edu/index.html--Clemson College AthleticsYou are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island and neither are we. We reach across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DM us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

From beer labels to literary classics like A River Runs Through It, trout fishing is a beloved feature of the iconography of the American West. But as Jen Brown demonstrates in Trout Culture: How Fly Fishing Forever Changed the Rocky Mountain West (U Washington Press, 2017), the popular conception of Rocky Mountain trout fishing as a quintessential experience of communion with nature belies the sport's long history of environmental manipulation, engineering, and, ultimately, transformation.A fly-fishing enthusiast herself, Brown places the rise of recreational trout fishing in a local and global context. Globally, she shows how the European sport of fly-fishing came to be a defining, tourist-attracting feature of the expanding 19th-century American West. Locally, she traces the way that the burgeoning fly-fishing tourist industry shaped the environmental, economic, and social development of the Western United States: introducing and stocking favored fish species, eradicating the less favored native "trash fish," changing the courses of waterways, and leading to conflicts with Native Americans' fishing and territorial rights. Through this analysis, Brown demonstrates that the majestic trout streams often considered a timeless feature of the American West are in fact the product of countless human interventions adding up to a profound manipulation of the Rocky Mountain environment.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 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

Today I talked to Ben Guest about his new book Zen and the Art of Coaching Basketball: A Namibian Odyssey (2021).Pressure plays, buzzer-beaters, and mindfulness meditation: A team of teenagers goes for the championship in Namibia’s professional basketball league.Ben Guest takes a high school coaching gig on the other side of the world. On the first day of practice one of the ten players can’t complete a simple defensive slide. Follow their journey over two seasons as the team loses a heartbreaker in the high school league championship game and then take their talents to Namibia’s professional league, the KBA.Guest models a different way of coaching: meditation, team-led decision making, and surrendering to what is. This expertly-told memoir includes cameos from Coach K and Bob Knight, and a detour through the Mississippi Delta, until we find ourselves on the biggest stage of Namibian basketball: The KBA Finals.Paul Knepper covered 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

Today we are joined by Rebecca Joyce Kissane, Professor of Sociology at Lafayette University, and Sarah Winslow, Professor of Sociology at Clemson University, who together are the authors of Whose Game?: Gender and Power in Fantasy Sports (Temple University Press, 2020). In our conversation, we discussed why people play fantasy sports, how men and women experience fantasy sports differently, and what possibilities might exist for real transformation of the masculinist sports world.Whose Game is an incisive analysis of the classed and gendered politics of fantasy sports. Kissane and Winslow take fantasy sport seriously and unpack the ways in which fantasy sports reify and reproduce the class and gendered relations of power in social networks, workplaces and families. They argue that fantasy sports privilege behaviours typically coded male such as competitiveness, the pursuit of dominance, and the need for control. They examine how those elements of fantasy gameplay shape men’s and women’s experiences of playing fantasy sports.Kissane and Winslow develop the concept of jock statsculinity, as a mediated form of fantasy sports masculinity that challenges more normative notions of hegemonic masculinity. Through fantasy sports, a wider range of men can participate in traditionally masculinity activities, including competition and banter, without regard to their physical capabilities. Fantasy sports thus open normative masculinity to a wider range of people than hegemonic masculinity. At the same time, Kissane and Winslow stress that not all men have equal access to jock statsculinity – white, professional men are much more likely to take part in it.Women who want to participate in the fantasy sports world learn to navigate the space as a powerfully masculine and hetero normative space. Fantasy sports ostensibly offer women an opportunity to compete with men on a level playing field, but those spaces and the common behaviours there are coded as male. Women who play fantasy sports may face harassment, but they almost always experience marginalization and belittlement. Nevertheless, for many women, fantasy provides a way to win some of the social benefits of masculinity and/or transgress them.Fantasy sports offer both men and women new opportunities to build connections with their relatives, co-workers, and people with similar interests, but in the realm of fantasy sport, both men and women prioritize building relationships with other men. At the same time, as Kissane and Winslow point out, even though they occupy a privileged position in the fantasy sports world social structure, men also suffer from their engagement with jock statsculinity. Men report much higher rates of emotional impact from fantasy sport. Many men spend considerable amounts of time – perhaps too much time away from their loved ones - setting their line-ups and researching matchups.Whose Game is a wide-ranging analysis and discussion of many of the key issues facing both male and female fantasy sports fans from two leading sports sociologists. Their work will be of general interest to sports fans, but particularly useful for people teaching about sports sociology, gender and politics.Keith Rathbone is a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He researches twentieth-century French social and cultural history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

"They don't know me. They don't know what I'm capable of." Diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder, a form of autism, as a toddler, Anthony Ianni wasn't expected to succeed in school or participate in sports, but he had other ideas. As a child, Ianni told anybody who would listen, including head coach Tom Izzo, that he would one day play for the Michigan State Spartans.Centered: Autism, Basketball, and One Athlete's Dreams is the firsthand account of a young man's social, academic, and athletic struggles and his determination to reach his goals. In this remarkable memoir, Ianni reflects on his experiences with both basketball and the autism spectrum. Centered, an inspirational sports story in the vein of Rudy, reveals Ianni to be unflinching in his honesty, generous in his gratitude, and gracious in his compassion.Sports fans will root for the underdog. Parents, teachers, and coaches will gain insight into the experience of an autistic child. And everyone will triumph in the achievements of Centered.Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sports

Both a symbol of the Mubarak government’s power and a component in its construction of national identity, football served as fertile ground for Egyptians to confront the regime’s overthrow during the 2011 revolution. With the help of the state, appreciation for football in Egypt peaked in the late 2000s. Yet after Mubarak fell, fans questioned their previous support, calling for a reformed football for a new, postrevolutionary nation.In Egypt’s Football Revolution: Emotion, Masculinity, and Uneasy Politics (U Texas Press, 2021), Carl Rommel examines the politics of football as a space for ordinary Egyptians and state forces to negotiate a masculine Egyptian chauvinism. Basing his discussion on several years of fieldwork with fans, players, journalists, and coaches, he investigates the increasing attention paid to football during the Mubarak era; its demise with the 2011 uprisings and 2012 Port Said massacre, which left seventy-two fans dead; and its recent rehabilitation. Cairo’s highly organized and dedicated Ultras fans became a key revolutionary force through their antiregime activism, challenging earlier styles of fandom and making visible entrenched ties between sport and politics. As the appeal of football burst, alternative conceptions of masculinity, emotion, and politics came to the fore to demand or prevent revolution and reform.The book is available for purchase for customers in Europe and the Middle East from Combined Academic Books. Quote CSFS2021 at check-out for 30% discount; and for customers in the US at the University of Texas Press. Quote UTXROMEGY at check-out for 20% discount.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

The battle between Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns is remembered as one of the greatest fights of all time. But in the months before the two finally collided on April 15, 1985, there was a feeling in the air that boxing was in trouble. The biggest name in the business, Sugar Ray Leonard, was retired with no logical replacement in sight, while the American Medical Association was calling for a ban on the sport.With Hagler–Hearns looking like boxing's last hurrah, promoter Bob Arum embarked on one the most audacious publicity campaigns in history, hyping the bout until the entire country was captivated. Arum's task was difficult. He'd spent years trying and failing to make Hagler a star, while Hearns was a gifted but inconsistent performer. Could Arum possibly get a memorable fight out of these two moody, unpredictable warriors?The Hagler–Hearns fight is now part of history, but The War: Hagler-Hearns and Three Rounds for the Ages (Hamilcar Publications, 2021) by Don Stradley explores the many factors behind the event, and how it helped establish what many feel was boxing's greatest era. No book, not even George Kimball’s classic, Four Kings, has focused solely on this legendary fight involving two of those "Four Kings" that boxing fans have revered for their skills and willingness to take on challenges that many fighters do not take in today's boxing landscape.With additional commentary from many who were there, Stradley shows the unlikely path taken by two fighters searching for greatness. They didn't care how many punches they endured, as long as it led to stardom. When the fight was over, however, each learned that fame inflicted its own kind of damage.Paul Knepper covered 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