Sports, Power, and Resistance

An Introduction to Critical Sports Studies

Author: edited by Thomas P. Oates and Travis Vogan

What sports can tell us about power relations

Cloth – $110

978-0-252-04994-1

Paper – $30

978-0-252-08961-9

eBook – $19.95

978-0-252-04911-8

Publication Date

Paperback: 09/22/2026
Cloth: 09/22/2026

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About the Book

Sports embodies and defines US culture while also shaping it and being shaped by it. Thomas P. Oates and Travis Vogan present essays focused on the intersections across sport, power, and resistance in the North American sports world.

Topics range from Black coaches in the National Football League to disordered eating within distance running to transgender athletes’ fight to participate in sports. The editors have organized the contributions into three sections. Part one probes how sports build communities that foster belonging as well as exclusion. The essays in part two explore multiple forms of resistance in sports through various performances and representations. In the final section, essayists analyze more explicit efforts to use sports as a platform for activism from various political viewpoints. Throughout, the works nurture and demonstrate a sensibility that encourages humanistic, critical, and interdisciplinary inquiry.

Wide-reaching and accessible, Sports, Power, and Resistance explores timely issues while demonstrating the value of blending perspectives to better understand the games we play and watch.

Contributors: Ali Bouterse, Adrian Burgos, Jr., Michael L. Butterworth, Noah Cohan, Douglas Hartmann, Victoria E. Johnson, Abraham I. Khan, Jason Kido Lopez, Theresa Runstedtler, Jaime Schultz, Samantha N. Sheppard, and Travers

About the Author

Thomas P. Oates is a professor in the Department of American Studies and School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Football and Manliness: An Unauthorized Feminist Account of the NFL. Travis Vogan is a professor in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication and Department of American Studies at the University of Iowa. He is the author of LeRoy Neiman: The Life of America’s Most Beloved and Belittled Artist.

Reviews

“The essays do a good job of both explaining the popularity of the sports they discuss while also showing how they raise ideas and employ practices that critique structures of economic advantage and social authority. All the contributors address important topics and a few focus on issues that have not been widely written about.”
—Aaron Baker, author of The Baseball Film: A Cultural and Transmedia History