Join us in welcoming Journal of Sport History’s new editor: Daniel A. Nathan! The first issue published under his editorship, Volume 51, Issue 2, is out now online.  

Dr. Nathan is the Douglas Family Chair in American Culture, History, and Literary and Interdisciplinary Studies at Skidmore College. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Iowa. Along with many published articles and book chapters, he authored Saying It’s So: A Cultural History of the Black Sox Scandal (2003). Nathan also edited Rooting for the Home Team: Sport, Community, and Identity (2013) and Baltimore Sports: Stories from Charm City (2016), and co-edited with anthropologist George Gmelch, Baseball Beyond Our Borders: An International Pastime (2017). Along with Maureen M. Smith and Sarah K. Fields, he is the co-editor of the forthcoming anthology Sports Through the Lens: Essays on 25 Iconic Photographs.  

Nathan is an active member of the North American Society for Sport History, previously serving as the organization’s President, and has worked as an Associate Editor and the Film, Media, and Museum Reviews editor for the Journal of Sport History. He has been published in the journal several times before, including two reviews, “Revisiting Ellis Island to Ebbets Field” and “Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide,” and the introduction to a retrospective forum on Allen Guttmann.  

“It is an honor to be the JSH editor,” says Nathan. “All my predecessors have done valuable, admirable, impressive work, and it was a pleasure to work with the former editor, Maureen Smith, who did a first-rate job, at a difficult historical moment, and was an excellent mentor for the six years I was an Associate Editor. And while I will miss working with Mo, I’m very much looking forward to collaborating with the JSH editorial team, as well as with scholars all over the world. That collaborative spirit, of working with and learning from others, is one of the things I’m most looking forward to about this position, because my experience is that working together often yields better work. And high-quality scholarship is our primary objective.” 

Maureen M. Smith is the outgoing editor and has worked on 16 issues of Journal of Sport History, since 2018. She earned her M.S. in kinesiology at Ithaca College and Ph.D. in Sport Humanities at Ohio University. Dr. Smith is currently a professor of kinesiology at California State University, Sacramento. 

Although new to the role of editor, Nathan already has a variety of initiatives, goals, and projects he is working on. “We’re looking forward to working with the organizers of the annual NASSH Pre-conference Workshop to publish one special issue per year. We’re also planning on some smaller initiatives, such as forums on specific themes, such as the challenging relationship between knowing and documenting things that happened in the past and the fraught process of narrating and explaining what happened and what it might mean,” he says. “We’re also hoping to have a 30th anniversary forum looking back on and re-assessing Hoop Dreams (1994). And perhaps a forum, or a gallery of sorts, about microhistories, historical miniatures. At the same time, we’re excited to see what work comes our way, to learn about what is going on in the field.” 

If you’re looking to submit work to Journal of Sport History, now is the time! The journal is always accepting submissions of scholarly work on the historical, social, and cultural aspects of sports, including articles, book and media reviews, and more.  

“We are committed to being inclusive in terms of the work we publish, that is, regarding subject matter and theoretical and methodological approaches. Excellent, high-quality work comes in many shapes, sizes, and flavors. My training and inclination are interdisciplinary, so we are amenable to those kinds of projects. We’re also excited to work with people on oral histories. Additionally, we have started an initiative in which veteran sport historians reflect on a single book that deeply impacted their work. At the end of the day, we’re hoping to publish the best work we can, articles and other kinds of scholarship that are carefully crafted, critically alert, and thought provoking,” he says. 

Find Out More 

The Journal of Sport History promotes the study of historical, social, and cultural aspects of sports. We invite the submission of scholarly articles, research notes, documents, and commentaries exploring the development of sports; their societal impact; their intersection with culture, politics, economics, and identity; and more. Oral histories and book and film reviews are assigned by the Editor. 

• Individual subscriptions can be made through the University of Illinois Press website.  

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• Ready to see your work featured in Journal of Sport History? Submit original scholarly work here.