This summer, many major sporting events will take place, including UEFA Euro and Copa America (soccer/football), Wimbledon (tennis), Tour de France (cycling) and the 2024 Summer Olympics. The diversity display books this July will look at this topic of sports, explaining exclusions in the past, showing how sports have become more inclusive and diverse over time, and highlighting some of the people who broke down barriers or challenged the status quo. For all those who enjoy watching, attending or participating in games and physical competitions, enjoy this selection of e-books that look into the diversity of sports.
A physical book display is now available at Hunt Library with the selection rotating weekly. Some of the eBooks listed below also have a physical listing. Please check the availability.
Special thanks to our Materials Processing Coordinator, Leah Zande, for compiling this list. Learn more on the DEI events page.
'Race', Ethnicity and Racism in Sports Coaching
Steven Bradbury; Jim Lusted; van Sterkenburg, Jacco (2021)
In recent years there has been a steady increase in the racial and ethnic diversity of the playing workforce in many sports around the world. However, there has been a minimal throughput of racial and ethnic minorities into coaching and leadership positions. This book brings together leading researchers from around the world to examine key questions around 'race', ethnicity and racism in sports coaching. The book focuses specifically on the ways in which 'race', ethnicity and racism operate, and how they are experienced and addressed (or not) within the socio-cultural sphere of sports coaching.
Theoretically informed and empirically grounded, it examines macro- (societal), meso- (organisational), and micro- (individual) level barriers to racial and ethnic diversity as well as the positive action initiatives designed to help overcome them. Featuring multi-disciplinary perspectives, the book is arranged into three thematic sections, addressing the central topics of representation and racialised barriers in sports coaching; racialised identities, diversity and intersectionality in sports coaching; and formalised racial equality interventions in sports coaching. Including case studies from across North America, Europe and Australasia, "'Race', Ethnicity and Racism in Sports Coaching" is essential reading for students, academics and practitioners with a critical interest in the sociology of sport, sport coaching, sport management, sport development, and 'race' and ethnicity studies. - Publisher's Description
Request this Title
Sport Media Vectors: Gender and Diversity, Reconstructing the Field
Walzak, Laurel; Vidotto, Danica; Collura, Francesco (2021)
In this book, Walzak, Collura and Vidotto bring together an invited collection of writing from emerging scholars about sport, sport media and equity. Authors span from undergraduates and Masters students to doctoral candidates. All are passionate and excited about the possibilities for equity and radical change that needs to happen across the sport and sport media landscape to make sports truly equitable.
This collection reflects the authors' investments and interest in sports. Each author investigates and reflects on a key social justice issue related to sport and sport media. The authors turn to social media, traditional broadcast, and personal experiences to explore their areas of interest. The content in this book ranges from exploring and analyzing an individual athlete to Muslim Sportswomen, leagues and teams, to autobiographical narratives. This critical social justice scholarship in sport and sport media offers a critique by young academics who are interested in pushing the status quo and shaking up the historical, social-cultural, and political foundations of sports locally, nationally, and globally. - Publisher's Description
Request this Title
Sport, Identity and Inclusion in Europe: The Experiences of LGBTQ People in Sport
Ilse Hartmann-Tews (2022)
This book explores and critically assesses the challenges and experiences of LGBTQ people within sport in Europe. It presents cutting-edge research data and insights from across the continent, with a focus on sport policy, sport systems, and issues around anti-discrimination and inclusion. The book introduces the theoretical and methodological foundations of research into LGBTQ people in sport and then presents in-depth comparative surveys of systems and experiences in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the UK, and Spain.
A final section considers the effectiveness of policy in this area and motives for participation, and looks ahead at future directions in research, policy, and practice. Tracing the frontiers of our understanding of the experiences of LGBTQ people in contemporary Europe, this is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in the sociology of sport, sport policy, LGBTQI studies, gender and sexuality studies, or cultural studies. - Publisher's Description
Request this Title
Beyond the Black Power Salute: Athlete Activism in an Era of Change
Kaliss, Gregory (2023)
Unequal opportunity sparked Jim Brown’s endeavors to encourage Black development while Billie Jean King fought so that women tennis players could earn more money and enjoy greater freedom. Gregory J. Kaliss examines these events and others to guide readers through the unprecedented wave of protest that swept sports in the 1960s and 1970s. The little-known story of the University of Wyoming football players suspended for their activism highlights an analysis of protests by college athletes. The 1971 Muhammad Ali–Joe Frazier clash provides a high-profile example of the Black male athlete’s effort to redefine Black masculinity.
An in-depth look at the American Basketball Association reveals a league that put Black culture front and center with its style of play and shows how the ABA influenced the development of hip-hop. As Kaliss describes the breakthroughs achieved by these athletes, he also explores the barriers that remained--and in some cases remain today. - Publisher's Description
Request this Title
Swimming Against the Tide: True Story of Para Swimmer Madhavi Latha
Prathigudupu, Madhavi Latha (2021)
"Swimming Against the Tide" is an inspirational story about an ordinary woman with extraordinary grit who set out to create a fair and inclusive world for the persons with disability. When she was seven months old, a massive polio attack left Madhavi paralyzed below the shoulder. But her parents refused to leave her to her fate. With their most powerful wealth―patience and love―they gave Madhavi the wings to set out and conquer the world on her own terms. Triumphing over a near-death situation with hydrotherapy, she eventually became a national champion in para swimming. She then started a movement called ‘Yes, We Too Can!!!’ and co-opted other athletes with disabilities to realize their dreams through access to sports.
Banker, public speaker and National Para Swimming Champion with 30 medals for swimming at the state and national level, co-founder of the Paralympic Swimming Association of Tamil Nadu, the Wheelchair Basketball Federation of India and more, behind this stellar list of accolades is the story of a young girl from a sleepy little village who dared to dream and challenged her circumstances, determined to surge through ‘disability’, emerging a winner and becoming an inspiration to many. - Publisher's Description
Request this Title
Deaf Players in Major League Baseball: A History, 1883 to the Present
Edwards, R.A.R. (2020)
The first deaf baseball player joined the pro ranks in 1883. By 1901, four played in the major leagues, most notably outfielder William "Dummy" Hoy and pitcher Luther "Dummy" Taylor. Along the way, deaf players developed a distinctive approach, bringing visual acuity and sign language the sport.
They crossed paths with other pioneers, including Moses Fleetwood Walker and Jackie Robinson. This book recounts their great moments in the game, from the first all-deaf barnstorming team to the only meeting of a deaf batter and a deaf pitcher in a major league game. The true story--often dismissed as legend--of Hoy, together with umpire "Silk" O'Loughlin, bringing hand signals to baseball is told. - Publisher's Description
Request this Title
The Black Man in Brazilian Soccer
Filho, Mario; Draper, Jack (2021)
At turns lyrical, ironic, and sympathetic, Mario Filho's chronicle of "the beautiful game" is a classic of Brazilian sports writing. Filho (1908-1966)-a famous Brazilian journalist after whom Rio's Maracana stadium is officially named-tells the Brazilian soccer story as a boundary-busting one of race relations, popular culture, and national identity.
Now in English for the first time, the book highlights national debates about the inclusion of African-descended people in the body politic and situates early black footballers as key creators of Brazilian culture. When first introduced to Brazil by British expatriots at the end of the nineteenth century, the game was reserved for elites, excluding poor, working-class, and black Brazilians. Filho, drawing on lively in-depth interviews with coaches, players, and fans, points to the 1920s and 1930s as watershed decades when the gates cracked open. The poor players and players of color entered the game despite virulent discrimination. By the mid-1960s, Brazil had established itself as a global soccer powerhouse, winning two World Cups with the help of star Afro-Brazilians such as Pele and Garrincha. As a story of sport and racism in the world's most popular sport, this book could not be more relevant today. - Publisher's Description
Request this Title
Passing the Baton: Black Women Track Stars and American Identity
Ariail, Cat (2020)
After World War II, the United States used international sport to promote democratic values and its image of an ideal citizen. But African American women excelling in track and field upset such notions. Cat M. Ariail examines how athletes such as Alice Coachman, Mae Faggs, and Wilma Rudolph forced American sport cultures—both white and Black—to reckon with the athleticism of African American women. Marginalized still further in a low-profile sport, young Black women nonetheless bypassed barriers to represent their country.
Their athletic success soon threatened postwar America's dominant ideas about race, gender, sexuality, and national identity. As Ariail shows, the wider culture defused these radical challenges by locking the athletes within roles that stressed conservative forms of femininity, blackness, and citizenship. A rare exploration of African American women athletes and national identity, "Passing the Baton" reveals young Black women as active agents in the remaking of what it means to be American. - Publisher's Description
Request this Title
Women's Football in a Global, Professional Era
Culvin, Alex; Bowes, Ali (2023)
The global professionalization of women's football has gathered momentum in the twenty first century, and professional women footballers are now more prevalent and evident in cultures around the world. Despite increased professionalization and record-breaking viewing and participation figures for women's football, there are persistent challenges for women in the game. Professional football is now a viable career opportunity for women globally; however, as "Women's Football in a Global, Professional Era" demonstrates, there are pressing issues and unanswered questions that remain in the game.
In this collection, a range of scholars contribute research covering three key areas as women's football shifts into a global, professional era: issues surrounding the historical development of professional women's football, documentation of the lived experiences of women in an emerging professional space and, finally, discussions around commercialization and media coverage of the sport. "Women's Football in a Global, Professional Era" is an important addition to discussions on sport as work for women, and an essential reference point for students, researchers and sports professionals interested in the debates around the professionalization of women's football internationally. - Publisher's Description
Request this Title
Jews, Sports, and the Rites of Citizenship
Kugelmass, Jack (2023)
To many, an association between Jews and sports seems almost oxymoronic--yet Jews have been prominent in boxing, basketball, and fencing, and some would argue that hurler Sandy Koufax is America's greatest athlete ever. In "Jews, Sports, and the Rites of Citizenship," Jack Kugelmass shows that sports--significant in constructing nations and in determining their degree of exclusivity--also figures prominently in the Jewish imaginary. This interdisciplinary collection brings together the perspectives of anthropologists and historians to provide both methodological and regional comparative frameworks for exploring the meaning of sports for a minority population. - Publisher's Description
Request this Title
Skateboarding and Urban Landscapes in Asia: Endless Spots
McDuie-Ra, Duncan (2021)
As urban development in Asia has accelerated, cities in the region have become central to skateboarding culture, livelihoods, and consumption. Asia's urban landscapes are desired for their endless supply of 'spots'. A spot is assemblage of objects, surfaces and obstacles holding the possibilities to perform skateboarding manoeuvres (tricks).
Spots are not built for skateboarding; they are accidents of urban planning and commercial activity; glitches in the urban machine. Skateboarders and filmers chase these glitches searching for spots to make skate video, the currency of the industry and skateboarding's primary cultural artefact. Once captured, performances at Asia's spots circulate rapidly through digital platforms to millions of skateboarders, enrolling spots from Shenzhen, Dubai and Ramallah into an alternative cartography of the region. By focusing on this alternative way of desiring and consuming urban Asia, this book explores the ways skateboarding resets relational and comparative hierarchies of urban development within Asia and between Asia and the West. - Publisher's Description
Request this Title
Black Dragon : Afro Asian Performance and the Martial Arts Imagination
McDuie-Ra, Duncan (2021)
In "Black Dragon," Zachary F. Price illuminates martial arts as a site of knowledge exchange between Black, Asian, and Asian American people and cultures to offer new insights into the relationships among these groups. Drawing on case studies that include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s appearance in Bruce Lee’s film "Game of Death," Ron Van Clief and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the Wu-Tang Clan, and Chinese American saxophonist Fred Ho, Price argues that the regular blending and borrowing between these distinct cultural heritages is healing rather than appropriative.
His analyses of performance, power, and identity within this cultural fusion demonstrate how, historically, urban working-class Black men have developed community and practiced self-care through the contested adoption of Asian martial arts practice. By zeroing in on this rich but heretofore understudied vein of American cultural exchange, Price not only broadens the scholarship around sites of empowerment via such exchanges but also offers a compelling example of nonessentialist liberation for the twenty-first century. - Publisher's Description
Request this Title
Sexual Minorities in Sports: Prejudice at Play
Sartore-Baldwin, Melanie (2013)
What does it mean to be gay, lesbian―or anyone else considered a sexual "other"―in the arena of competitive sports? With what consequences? The authors of "Sexual Minorities in Sports" shed light on the dynamics of sexual prejudice in venues ranging from high school athletics to the Olympics and the major leagues. Case studies of the experiences of LGBT athletes, coaches, and administrators also take account of the important role of race. Empirically rich and full of theoretical insights, the book concludes by pinpointing opportunities for confronting prejudice and empowering individuals across the lines of both gender and sexual orientation. - Publisher's Description
Request this Title
Isaac Murphy: The Rise and Fall of a Black Jockey
Mooney, Katherine (2023)
Isaac Murphy, born enslaved in 1861, still reigns as one of the greatest jockeys in American history. Black jockeys like Murphy were at the top of the most popular sport in America at the end of the nineteenth century. They were internationally famous, the first African American superstar athletes-and with wins in three Kentucky Derbies and countless other prestigious races, Murphy was the greatest of them all.
At the same time, he lived through the seismic events of Emancipation and Reconstruction and formative conflicts over freedom and equality in the United States. And inevitably he was drawn into those conflicts, with devastating consequences. Katherine C. Mooney uncovers the history of Murphy's troubled life, his death in 1896 at age thirty-five, and his afterlife. In recounting Murphy's personal story, she also tells two of the great stories of change in nineteenth-century America: the debates over what a multiracial democracy might look like and the battles over who was to hold power in an economy that increasingly resembled the corporate, wealth-polarized world we know today. - Publisher's Description
Request this Title
The Umpire Is Out: Calling the Game and Living My True Self
Scott, Dale; Neyer, Rob; Bean, Billy (2022)
Dale Scott's career as a professional baseball umpire spanned nearly forty years, including thirty-three in the Major Leagues, from 1985 to 2017. He worked exactly a thousand games behind the plate, calling balls and strikes at the pinnacle of his profession, working in every Major League Baseball stadium, and interacting with dozens of other top-flight umpires, colorful managers, and hundreds of players, from future Hall of Famers to one-game wonders. Scott has enough stories about his career on the field to fill a dozen books, and there are plenty of those stories here. He's not interested in settling scores, but throughout the book he's honest about managers and players, some of whom weren't always perfect gentlemen.
But what makes Scott's book truly different is his unique perspective as the only umpire in the history of professional baseball to come out as gay during his career. Granted, that was after decades of remaining in the closet, and Scott writes vividly and movingly about having to "play the game": maintaining a facade of straightness while privately becoming his true self and building a lasting relationship with his future husband. He navigated this obstacle course at a time when his MLB career was just taking off-and when North America was consumed by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Scott's story isn't only about his leading a sort of double life, then opening himself up to the world and discovering a new generosity of spirit. It's also a baseball story, filled with insights and memorable anecdotes that come so naturally from someone who spent decades among the world's greatest baseball players, managers, and games. Scott's story is fascinating both for his umpiring career and for his being a pioneer for LGBTQ people within baseball and across sports. - Publisher's Description
Request this Title
Lakota Hoops: Life and Basketball on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
Klein, Alan (2020)
For over 150 years the Lakota have tenaciously defended their culture and land against white miners, settlers, missionaries, and the U.S. Army, and paid the price. Their economy is in shambles and they face serious social issues, but their culture and outlook remain vibrant. Basketball has a role to play in the way that people on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation configure their hopes for a better future, and for pride in their community.
In "Lakota Hoops," anthropologist Alan Klein trains his experienced eye on the ways that Lakota traditions find a seamless expression in the sport. In a variety of way such as weaving time-honored religious practices into the game or extending the warrior spirit of Crazy Horse to the players on the court, basketball has become a preferred way of finding continuity with the past. But the game is also well suited to the present and has become the largest regular gathering for all Lakota, promoting national pride as well as a venue for the community to creatively and aggressively confront white bigotry when needed. Richly researched and filled with interviews with Pine Ridge residents, including both male and female players, "Lakota Hoops" offers a compelling look at the highs and lows of a community that has made basketball its own. - Publisher's Description
Request this Title
Reclaiming Tom Longboat: Indigenous Self-Determination in Canadian Sport
Forsyth, Janice (2020)
Reclaiming Tom Longboat recounts the history of Indigenous sport in Canada through the lens of the prestigious Tom Longboat Awards, shedding light on a significant yet overlooked aspect of Canadian policy and Crown-Indigenous relations. Drawing on a rich and varied set of oral and textual sources, including interviews with award recipients and Jan Eisenhardt, the creator of the Awards himself, Janice Forsyth critically assesses the state’s role in policing Indigenous bodies and identities through sport, from the assimilationist sporting regulations of residential schools to the present-day exclusion of Indigenous activities from mainstream sports.
This work recognizes the role of sport as a tool for colonization in Canada, while also acknowledging its potential to become a tool for decolonization and self-determination. - Publisher's Description
Request this Title
Fighting Visibility: Sports Media and Female Athletes in the UFC
McClearen, Jennifer (2021)
Ultimate Fighting Championship and the present and future of women's sports Mixed martial arts stars like Amanda Nunes, Zhang Weili, and Ronda Rousey have made female athletes top draws in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Jennifer McClearen charts how the promotion incorporates women into its far-flung media ventures and investigates the complexities surrounding female inclusion. On the one hand, the undeniable popularity of cards headlined by women add much-needed diversity to the sporting landscape.
On the other, the UFC leverages an illusion of promoting difference-whether gender, racial, ethnic, or sexual-to grow its empire with an inexpensive and expendable pool of female fighters. McClearen illuminates how the UFC's half-hearted efforts at representation generate profit and cultural cachet while covering up the fact it exploits women of color, lesbians, gender non-conforming women, and others. Thought provoking and timely, "Fighting Visibility" tells the story of how a sports entertainment phenomenon made difference a part of its brand-and the ways women paid the price for success. - Publisher's Description
Request this Title
Surf and Rescue : George Freeth and the Birth of California Beach Culture
Moser, Patrick (2022)
The mixed-race Hawaiian athlete George Freeth brought surfing to Venice, California, in 1907. Over the next twelve years, Freeth taught Southern Californians to surf and swim while creating a modern lifeguard service that transformed the beach into a destination for fun, leisure, and excitement. Patrick Moser places Freeth's inspiring life story against the rise of the Southern California beach culture he helped shape and define.
Freeth made headlines with his rescue of seven fishermen, an act of heroism that highlighted his innovative lifeguarding techniques. But he also founded California's first surf club and coached both male and female athletes, including Olympic swimming champion and "father of modern surfing" Duke Kahanamoku. Often in financial straits, Freeth persevered as a teacher and lifeguarding pioneer--building a legacy that endured long after his death during the 1919 influenza pandemic. A compelling merger of biography and sports history, "Surf and Rescue" brings to light the forgotten figure whose novel way of seeing the beach sparked the imaginations of people around the world. - Publisher's Description
Request this Title
Skiing into the Bright Open: My Solo Journey to the South Pole
Arnesen, Liv; Huntford, Roland (2021)
Tracing her path from the heroic stories of explorers like Fridtjof Nansen and Ernest Shackleton to her own crossing of the Greenland Ice Cap in 1992, Arnesen credits the inspiring feats of those who preceded her but also describes the obstacles-including niggling self-doubt-that tradition, convention, and downright prejudice put in her way as she endeavored to find the support and sponsorship granted to men in her field.
A tale of solitary adventure in the bleak and beautiful bone-chilling cold of Antarctica, "Skiing into the Bright Open" tells a story of gritty determination, thrilling achievement, and perseverance in the face of near despair and daunting odds; it is, ultimately, an object lesson in the power of a dream if one is willing to pursue it to the ends of the earth. - Publisher's Description
Request this Title
Feature image by Fitsum Admasu on Unsplash