Defending the American Way of Life

Defending the American Way of Life PDF Author: Kevin B. Witherspoon
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
ISBN: 1682260763
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Winner, 2019 NASSH Book Award, Anthology. The Cold War was fought in every corner of society, including in the sport and entertainment industries. Recognizing the importance of culture in the battle for hearts and minds, the United States, like the Soviet Union, attempted to win the favor of citizens in nonaligned states through the soft power of sport. Athletes became de facto ambassadors of US interests, their wins and losses serving as emblems of broader efforts to shield American culture—both at home and abroad—against communism. In Defending the American Way of Life, leading sport historians present new perspectives on high-profile issues in this era of sport history alongside research drawn from previously untapped archival sources to highlight the ways that sports influenced and were influenced by Cold War politics. Surveying the significance of sports in Cold War America through lenses of race, gender, diplomacy, cultural infiltration, anti-communist hysteria, doping, state intervention, and more, this collection illustrates how this conflict remains relevant to US sporting institutions, organizations, and ideologies today.

Defending the American Way of Life

Defending the American Way of Life PDF Author: Kevin B. Witherspoon
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
ISBN: 1682260763
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Winner, 2019 NASSH Book Award, Anthology. The Cold War was fought in every corner of society, including in the sport and entertainment industries. Recognizing the importance of culture in the battle for hearts and minds, the United States, like the Soviet Union, attempted to win the favor of citizens in nonaligned states through the soft power of sport. Athletes became de facto ambassadors of US interests, their wins and losses serving as emblems of broader efforts to shield American culture—both at home and abroad—against communism. In Defending the American Way of Life, leading sport historians present new perspectives on high-profile issues in this era of sport history alongside research drawn from previously untapped archival sources to highlight the ways that sports influenced and were influenced by Cold War politics. Surveying the significance of sports in Cold War America through lenses of race, gender, diplomacy, cultural infiltration, anti-communist hysteria, doping, state intervention, and more, this collection illustrates how this conflict remains relevant to US sporting institutions, organizations, and ideologies today.

American Sport Culture

American Sport Culture PDF Author: Wiley Lee Umphlett
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description


Making the American Team

Making the American Team PDF Author: Mark Dyreson
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252066542
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
One day in front of the television would convince any alien that the entirety of American culture is built around sports. Politics and business are abustle with sports metaphors and endorsements by athletes. "Home runs," "bottom of the ninth," "fourth and ten," "slam dunk," and similar phrases litter the daily vocabulary. No matter how dire the news, sports will be reported as usual. How did this single-minded fascination come to be? Mark Dyreson locates the invasion of sport at the heart of American culture at the turn of the century. It was then that social reformers and political leaders believed that sport could revitalize the "republican experiment," that a new sense of national identity could forge a new sense of community and a healthy political order as it would serve to link America's thinking classes with the experiences of the masses. Nowhere was this better exemplified than in American accounts of the Olympic Games held between 1896 and 1912. In connecting sport to American history and culture, Dyreson has stepped up to the plate and hit one out of the park. A volume in the series Sport and Society, edited by Benjamin G. Rader and Randy Roberts

Asian American Sporting Cultures

Asian American Sporting Cultures PDF Author: Stanley I. Thangaraj
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479840165
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Delves into the long history of Asian American sporting cultures, considering how identities and communities are negotiated on sporting fields Through a close examination of Asian American sporting cultures ranging from boxing and basketball to spelling bees and wrestling, the contributors reveal the intimate connection between sport and identity formation. Sport plays a special role in the processes of citizen-making and of the policing of national and diasporic bodies. It is thus one key area in which Asian American stereotypes may be challenged, negotiated, and destroyed as athletic performances create multiple opportunities for claiming American identities. This volume incorporates work on Pacific Islander, South Asian, and Southeast Asian Americans as well as East Asian Americans, and explores how sports are gendered, including examinations of Asian American men’s attempts to claim masculinity through sporting cultures as well as the “Orientalism” evident in discussions of mixed martial arts as practiced by Asian American female fighters. This American story illuminates how marginalized communities perform their American-ness through co-ethnic and co-racial sporting spaces.

Understanding American Sports

Understanding American Sports PDF Author: Gerald R. Gems
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134067593
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 451

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Book Description
Co-authored by two of the world’s foremost experts on sports culture, one American and one European, this book draws on both the outsider’s perspective and that of the insider to explain American sports culture. With extensive use of examples and illustrations, the development of American sport from the nineteenth century until the present day is explained with reference to political, social, gender and economic issues.

Soccer Culture in America

Soccer Culture in America PDF Author: Yuya Kiuchi
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476604355
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
What does the world's favorite sport mean in the United States? Despite the common belief that it is only a women's sport, an immigrants' sport, a small kids' sport--or that hating soccer is very American, the new essays in this volume attest that soccer indeed is a very American and very popular sport, around since the 1940s. The all-new essays address issues concerning the business of the game, the meaning of men's and women's professional, national, high school and youth soccer, the community formed by the game, the media, the referees, the hooliganism and the treatment of the sport in academe.

We Average Unbeautiful Watchers

We Average Unbeautiful Watchers PDF Author: Noah Cohan
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496216172
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
Sports fandom--often more than religious, political, or regional affiliation--determines how millions of Americans define themselves. In We Average Unbeautiful Watchers, Noah Cohan examines contemporary sports culture to show how mass-mediated athletics are in fact richly textured narrative entertainments rather than merely competitive displays. While it may seem that sports narratives are "written" by athletes and journalists, Cohan demonstrates that fans are not passive consumers but rather function as readers and writers who appropriate those narratives and generate their own stories in building their sense of identity. Critically reading stories of sports fans' self-definition across genres, from the novel and the memoir to the film and the blog post, We Average Unbeautiful Watchers recovers sports games as sites where fan-authors theorize interpretation, historicity, and narrative itself. Fan stories demonstrate how unscripted sporting entertainments function as identity-building narratives--which, in turn, enhances our understanding of the way we incorporate a broad range of texts into our own life stories. Building on the work of sports historians, theorists of fan behavior, and critics of American literature, Cohan shows that humanistic methods are urgently needed for developing nuanced critical conversations about athletics. Sports take shape as stories, and it is scholars in the humanities who can best identify how they do so--and why that matters for American culture more broadly.

A Brief History of American Sports

A Brief History of American Sports PDF Author: Elliott J. Gorn
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252071843
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Elliott J. Gorn and Warren Goldstein show us where our games and pastimes came from, how they developed, and what they have meant to Americans. The great heroes of baseball and football are here, as well as the dramatic moments of boxing and basketball. Beyond this, the authors show us how sports fit into the larger contours of our past. A Brief History of American Sports reveals that from colonial times to the present, sports have been central to American culture, and a profound expression of who we are.

College Football and American Culture in the Cold War Era

College Football and American Culture in the Cold War Era PDF Author: Kurt Edward Kemper
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 025203466X
Category : Cold War
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Waging the Cold War's ideological battles on the gridiron

Separate Games

Separate Games PDF Author: David K. Wiggins
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
ISBN: 1682260178
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
The hardening of racial lines during the first half of the twentieth century eliminated almost all African Americans from white organized sports, forcing black athletes to form their own teams, organizations, and events. This separate sporting culture, explored in the twelve essays included here, comprised much more than athletic competition; these "separate games" provided examples of black enterprise and black self-help and showed the importance of agency and the quest for racial uplift in a country fraught with racialist thinking and discrimination.