Commodified and Criminalized examines the centrality of sport to discussions of racial ideologies... more Commodified and Criminalized examines the centrality of sport to discussions of racial ideologies and racist practices in the 21st century. It disputes familiar refrains of racial progress, arguing that athletes sit in a contradictory position masked by the logics of new racism and dominant white racial frames. Contributors discuss athletes ranging from Tiger Woods and Serena Williams to Freddy Adu and Shani Davis. Through dynamic case studies, Commodified and Criminalized unpacks the conversation between black athletes and colorblind discourse, while challenging the assumptions of contemporary sports culture. The contributors in this provocative collection push the conversation beyond the playing field and beyond the racial landscape of sports culture to explore the connections between sports representations and a broader history of racialized violence.
Sport films have been central to American cinema, playing an increasingly important role in the c... more Sport films have been central to American cinema, playing an increasingly important role in the communication of a commonsense understanding of race, gender, class, history, and social relations. Oddly, scholars have neglected sport films and their significance. Offering a comparative, theoretically grounded, and interdisciplinary approach, Visual Economies of/in Motion marks a novel and important point of departure in sport studies and cultural studies. It brings together a dozen essays on feature films and documentaries to probe the articulation of ideologies and identities, play and power, and sporting worlds and social fields.
Commodified and Criminalized examines the centrality of sport to discussions of racial ideologies... more Commodified and Criminalized examines the centrality of sport to discussions of racial ideologies and racist practices in the 21st century. It disputes familiar refrains of racial progress, arguing that athletes sit in a contradictory position masked by the logics of new racism and dominant white racial frames. Contributors discuss athletes ranging from Tiger Woods and Serena Williams to Freddy Adu and Shani Davis. Through dynamic case studies, Commodified and Criminalized unpacks the conversation between black athletes ...
"Animating Difference studies the way race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender are portrayed in rec... more "Animating Difference studies the way race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender are portrayed in recent animated films from 1990 through the present. Ranging from Aladdin to Toy Story to Up, these popular films are key media through which children (and adults) learn about the world and how to behave. While racial and gender stereotypes may not be as obvious as they may have been in films of decades past, they often continue to convey troubling messages and stereotypes in subtle and surprising ways.
Reviews:
"Animated films have increasingly become not only a major source of entertainment in American society but also a vast and complex mode of education. Animating Difference is one of the best books we have to enlighten, critique, and engage animated films through the intricate interplay of politics, education and entertainment. This is beautifully written and an immensely important book and should be read by everyone concerned about how we learn, watch, engage, and invest in our understanding of ourselves and others." —Henry Giroux, Pennsylvania State University, author of The Mouse That Roared "
Advance Praise for Visual Economies of/in Motion "Visual Economies o... more Advance Praise for Visual Economies of/in Motion "Visual Economies of/in Motion.- Sport and Film engages readers with a timely, well-integrated set of essays that reveal how sport and film, two ubiquitous forms of popular culture, conspire to articulate ideologies of race, ...
Commodified and Criminalized examines the centrality of sport to discussions of racial ideologies... more Commodified and Criminalized examines the centrality of sport to discussions of racial ideologies and racist practices in the 21st century. It disputes familiar refrains of racial progress, arguing that athletes sit in a contradictory position masked by the logics of new racism and dominant white racial frames. Contributors discuss athletes ranging from Tiger Woods and Serena Williams to Freddy Adu and Shani Davis. Through dynamic case studies, Commodified and Criminalized unpacks the conversation between black athletes and colorblind discourse, while challenging the assumptions of contemporary sports culture. The contributors in this provocative collection push the conversation beyond the playing field and beyond the racial landscape of sports culture to explore the connections between sports representations and a broader history of racialized violence.
Sport films have been central to American cinema, playing an increasingly important role in the c... more Sport films have been central to American cinema, playing an increasingly important role in the communication of a commonsense understanding of race, gender, class, history, and social relations. Oddly, scholars have neglected sport films and their significance. Offering a comparative, theoretically grounded, and interdisciplinary approach, Visual Economies of/in Motion marks a novel and important point of departure in sport studies and cultural studies. It brings together a dozen essays on feature films and documentaries to probe the articulation of ideologies and identities, play and power, and sporting worlds and social fields.
Commodified and Criminalized examines the centrality of sport to discussions of racial ideologies... more Commodified and Criminalized examines the centrality of sport to discussions of racial ideologies and racist practices in the 21st century. It disputes familiar refrains of racial progress, arguing that athletes sit in a contradictory position masked by the logics of new racism and dominant white racial frames. Contributors discuss athletes ranging from Tiger Woods and Serena Williams to Freddy Adu and Shani Davis. Through dynamic case studies, Commodified and Criminalized unpacks the conversation between black athletes ...
"Animating Difference studies the way race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender are portrayed in rec... more "Animating Difference studies the way race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender are portrayed in recent animated films from 1990 through the present. Ranging from Aladdin to Toy Story to Up, these popular films are key media through which children (and adults) learn about the world and how to behave. While racial and gender stereotypes may not be as obvious as they may have been in films of decades past, they often continue to convey troubling messages and stereotypes in subtle and surprising ways.
Reviews:
"Animated films have increasingly become not only a major source of entertainment in American society but also a vast and complex mode of education. Animating Difference is one of the best books we have to enlighten, critique, and engage animated films through the intricate interplay of politics, education and entertainment. This is beautifully written and an immensely important book and should be read by everyone concerned about how we learn, watch, engage, and invest in our understanding of ourselves and others." —Henry Giroux, Pennsylvania State University, author of The Mouse That Roared "
Advance Praise for Visual Economies of/in Motion "Visual Economies o... more Advance Praise for Visual Economies of/in Motion "Visual Economies of/in Motion.- Sport and Film engages readers with a timely, well-integrated set of essays that reveal how sport and film, two ubiquitous forms of popular culture, conspire to articulate ideologies of race, ...
... Punt Managing Editor: Bryony Dalefield Associate Editors: Robert Pepperell and Dene Grigar A ... more ... Punt Managing Editor: Bryony Dalefield Associate Editors: Robert Pepperell and Dene Grigar A full selection of reviews is published monthly on the LR web site ...
This article explores the racial politics of sports mascots through a comparative account of the ... more This article explores the racial politics of sports mascots through a comparative account of the uses of Indianness at Florida State University and the centrality of Confederate symbols at the University of Mississippi. It avoids the temptation of romanticizing resistance as well as easy, if not impulsive, condemnations. Instead, employing a neo-Gramscian and poststructural framework, it seeks to complicate prevailing understandings of sports mascots. It details the contours of imperial Whiteness and the competing efforts to reformulate Euro-American identity emergent in its wake. At the same time, it theorizes the awkward alliances often forged between subalterns and institutions with racially charged sports mascots.
Abstract This article analyzes racialized readings of The Matrixtrilogy. Examining popular, acade... more Abstract This article analyzes racialized readings of The Matrixtrilogy. Examining popular, academic, and vernacular sources, in print and online, it probes how commentators talk about race in the films and in turn how they use the films to talk about the racial politics of everyday life. It identifies two major interpretations: multiculturalist and White nationalist. It argues that despite obvious differences, together, these renderings of the trilogy must be understood as efforts to reconfigure racialized discourse in the wake of the civil rights ...
Introduction to Special Issue of the Journal of Hate Studies (14.1), “INTERROGATING THE PLACE OF ... more Introduction to Special Issue of the Journal of Hate Studies (14.1), “INTERROGATING THE PLACE OF HATE IN THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN”
2 The 'War on Terror' has made visible the desperate imaginings, disputed projects, and deadly ne... more 2 The 'War on Terror' has made visible the desperate imaginings, disputed projects, and deadly networks anchoring the quickening of American empire. The various campaigns launched at home and abroad over the past fi ve years have hinged upon the reiteration of national narratives, stories that celebrate the nation-state, legitimate its violence, and render its history in sanitized, if not mythological terms. Such stories at once reify and reproduce the entanglements of imperiled Whiteness, manifest destiny, and pathological others as they multiply and militarize the range of crisis zones and suspect people through a re-racialization of local and global relations (at fi rst blush to be little more than the cynical calculus of imperial geopolitics, an intensifi cation of the political economic cycles of global capital, or an example of a military state formation establishing hegemony in the service of these overlapping projects, culture, particularly media culture, has made this series of confl icts and crises possible, pleasurable, and powerful as sites for the application of force and fantasy, the fabrication of identity and experience, and the consolidation of meaning and community.
Abstract A fundamental contradiction anchors contemporary sport: for many, it exemplifies racial ... more Abstract A fundamental contradiction anchors contemporary sport: for many, it exemplifies racial transcendence; yet racism continues to shape play, persona, and possibilities. For Black athletes, in particular, it opens a space of overdetermination, constraining representation and reception, while challenging their humanity. Following Joe Feagin (2009), this article suggests the white racial frame offers a means of accounting for and unpacking the persistent force of race in a society determined to be beyond—or better ...
Tiger Woods is no longer America's son. He has matured—married, become a father, and... more Tiger Woods is no longer America's son. He has matured—married, become a father, and suffered the loss of his own father. He has had unparalleled success as a professional golfer, winning the Masters, the PGA Championship, Open Championship, and US Open three times each during the past decade. More importantly, perhaps, the multiracial moment that he and his branding exemplified, and sought to capture, has conclusively subsided. Pushed aside by the geopolitical panics and racial profiling after 9/11, a growing sense ...
Abstract From a media standpoint, the past 12 months could be called the year of Tiger Woods. Sta... more Abstract From a media standpoint, the past 12 months could be called the year of Tiger Woods. Starting with has fall from grace the night after Thanksgiving to his near triumphant return to the Masters in Augusta, no single athlete has so dominated the sports and tabloid headlines. For our essay this issue, JSM contributors Bill Davie, and Richard King and David Leonard offer two views of Tiger's media fallout. Davie looks at the public relations perspective, while King and Leonard analyze the coverage of Tiger through the lens of ...
Since its inception in 1926, the tradition of playing Indian at the University of Illinois Champa... more Since its inception in 1926, the tradition of playing Indian at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana (UIUC) has fostered powerful devotion and deep affection, creating powerful spaces of identification and narration for thousands of (largely EuroAmerican) ...
Journal for the Study of Sports and …, Jan 1, 2009
The four decades since Harry Edwards inspired and examined the uprising of African American athle... more The four decades since Harry Edwards inspired and examined the uprising of African American athletes at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City have witnessed major changes in sport, society, and the study of both: racism has become more covert and complicated, even as multiculturalism and the rhetoric of diversity shape popular culture and public policy; Black athletes came to dominate sport for a time, but remain forty-million-dollar slaves (Rhoden, 2006); more African Americans pursue careers in medicine, law, and higher ...
... Punt Managing Editor: Bryony Dalefield Associate Editors: Robert Pepperell and Dene Grigar A ... more ... Punt Managing Editor: Bryony Dalefield Associate Editors: Robert Pepperell and Dene Grigar A full selection of reviews is published monthly on the LR web site ...
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Books by C. Richard King
Reviews:
"Animated films have increasingly become not only a major source of entertainment in American society but also a vast and complex mode of education. Animating Difference is one of the best books we have to enlighten, critique, and engage animated films through the intricate interplay of politics, education and entertainment. This is beautifully written and an immensely important book and should be read by everyone concerned about how we learn, watch, engage, and invest in our understanding of ourselves and others." —Henry Giroux, Pennsylvania State University, author of The Mouse That Roared "
Reviews:
"Animated films have increasingly become not only a major source of entertainment in American society but also a vast and complex mode of education. Animating Difference is one of the best books we have to enlighten, critique, and engage animated films through the intricate interplay of politics, education and entertainment. This is beautifully written and an immensely important book and should be read by everyone concerned about how we learn, watch, engage, and invest in our understanding of ourselves and others." —Henry Giroux, Pennsylvania State University, author of The Mouse That Roared "