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Home on Campus?: Centering Sport in the University

Fri, November 18, 10:00 to 11:45am, HYATT REGENCY AT COLORADO CONVENTION CTR, Floor: Level 4, Capitol 6

Session Submission Type: Paper Session: Talk Format

Abstract

We propose a “Talk Format” panel devoted to the current state of Sport Studies, its position within American Studies, and its prospects for intellectual work that promotes a critical understanding of athletics, society, and the university. The panel, co-sponsored by the journal American Studies, is comprised of the editors and contributors to “Sport in the University,” a fall 2016 special issue of AMSJ. We focus on the role of sport in the university in a double sense: on the one hand, as an object of inquiry in the production of disciplinary knowledges; and, on the other, as the political economy of collegiate athletics.

The publication of robust scholarship in Sport Studies and the formation of a vibrant Sport Studies Caucus in the ASA refute the assertion that the field has failed to gain academic legitimacy. Yet, recent assessments of the state of the field in disciplinary journals (i.e. Journal of American History, International Review for the Sociology of Sport) continue to lament the marginalization of Sports Studies. We problematize this narrative of professional relegation by examining and exemplifying multidisciplinary scholarship that argues for the immanent relevance and critical significance of sport in our culture, on our campuses, and in our time.

Our panel examines the dominant discursive and institutional frameworks of the modern U.S. university in two interrelated ways. First, as referenced above, our five linked articles employ multiple, flexible methodological approaches to sport. We embrace a wide range of theoretical frameworks and research approaches, and our work resonates with that of scholars in other allegedly “marginal” fields (e.g. Critical Prison Studies, Settler Colonial Studies, Popular Culture Studies) who historically have gravitated to American Studies as place to struggle against the inherited assumptions of dominant university-based epistemologies.

Second, our panel seeks to contextualize the ongoing debates over the political economy of collegiate sport. Recent controversies have brought growing public attention not only to the enormous size and power of the sports industry within the contemporary U.S. university system but also to the labor and learning conditions of college athletes. We analyze the effects of neoliberal policies and their attendant modes of knowledge production. Our panel will further discuss how the NCAA labor system disproportionately disadvantages and punishes athletes of color, reifying larger stereotypes about race, class, and criminality in media discourses. We also debate the prevailing notion that the university should function as a training ground for professional athletics. At a time when the role of athletics in the American university stands as one of the most pressing political issues on campus, scholars of American Studies must engage more deeply and critically than ever. To that end, our panel aims to present scholarship on sports that is as dynamic and urgent as the games themselves.

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