The NFL

Critical and Cultural Perspectives

Edited by Thomas P. Oates and Zack Furness
Book Cover

PB: $30.95
EAN: 978-1-4399-0958-4
Publication: Jan 15

HC: $70.50
EAN: 978-1-4399-0957-7
Publication: Jun 14

Ebook: $30.95
EAN: 978-1-4399-0959-1
Publication: Jun 14

268 pages
6 x 9

Table of Contents

Foreword: Football as Mediated Spectacle • Michael Oriard Introduction: The Political Football: Culture, Critique, and the NFL • Thomas P. Oates and Zack Furness I Production, Promotion, and Control 1 The Greatest Game Ever Played: An NFL Origin Story • Daniel A. Grano 2 Game Time: A History of the Managerial Authority of the Instant Replay • Dylan Mulvin 3 The Ochocinco Brand: Social Media’s Impact on the NFL’s Institutional Control • Jacob Dittmer 4 New Media and the Repackaging of NFL Fandom • Thomas P. Oates II Identities, Social Hierarchies, and Cultural Power 5 NFL Sex • Toby Miller 6 Football and “Ghettocentric” Logics? The NFL’s Essentialist Mobilization of Black Bodies • Ronald L. Mower, David L. Andrews, and Oliver J. C. Rick 7 “I Was a Gladiator”: Pain, Injury, and Masculinity in the NFL • Katie Rodgers 8 Masculinity, Race, and Violence in Any Given Sunday • Aaron Baker 9 Spignesi, Sinatra, and the Pittsburgh Steelers: Franco’s Italian Army as an Expression of Ethnic Identity, 1972–1977 • Nicholas P. Ciotola III Gridirons and Battlefields 10 Offensive Lines: Sport-State Synergy in an Era of Perpetual War • Samantha King 11 NFL Films and the Militarization of Professional Football • Michael L. Butterworth 12 For the Love of National Manhood: Excavating the Cultural Politics and Media Memorializations of Pat Tillman • Kyle W. Kusz Contributors Index

About the Author(s)

Thomas P. Oates is Assistant Professor of American Studies and Journalism & Mass Communication at The University of Iowa. His work on sports, media, and contemporary culture has appeared in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies and the Sociology of Sport Journal.

Zack Furness is Assistant Professor of Communications at Penn State University, Greater Allegheny. He is the editor of Punkademics and the author of One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility (Temple).


In the Series

  • Sporting edited by Amy Bass

    As an international cultural activity for athleticism, spectatorship, and global cultural exchange, sport is unmatched by any other force on earth. And yet it remains a consistently understudied dimension of history and cultural studies. Sporting, edited by Amy Bass, aims to contribute to the study of sport by publishing works by people across a range of disciplines, by professional sportswriters, and by athletes to add substance to our still emerging notion of globalization.