Why Sports Studies?

• Because sports have long held a prominent place in American culture.

• Because American studies scholars often come to sports-centered projects out of larger questions about identity, politics, history, and narrative.

• Because sports, far from marginal, can profoundly impact Americans of all ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, classes, and ages.

• Because sports-interested scholars of diverse methodological backgrounds can most productively engage each other’s work under the multidisciplinary auspices of American studies.

For these reasons and many more, we have established the Sports Studies Caucus—creating a legible place in the academy for scholars interested in critically considering the roles sports play in American culture. Possessing, as we do, a diversity in critical methodologies that is both inclusive and illuminating, the members of the Sports Studies Caucus are dedicated to a consideration of sport that relates to issues of broader relevance: enriching and deepening connections between our work and the work of our not-so-sports-inclined colleagues.

Sports resonate widely in American society at large, and that resonance attracts the intellectual energies of scholars from across the academic spectrum. Rather than remain scattered, those energies deserve a designated forum in American studies. That forum is the ASA’s Sports Studies Caucus.

Won’t you join us?