Sport studies has directed much of its attention to athletes, the game, and the surrounding sport media industry. This is understandable not simply because athletes bring sport to life, but also because media narratives and fan reactions pivot around players and their actions on and off the field. Coaches, in contrast, have attracted far less scholarly interest, even as the power, celebrity, and importance of coaches have grown in recent years. This project seeks to refocus critical accounts of sport and society through readings of the history and significance of coaches and coaching. In particular, it calls for an interrogation of the entanglements of race, gender, nationality, and sexuality in the construction of coaches and coaching within sporting landscapes. We seek interdisciplinary pieces that critically reflect on the coach; we seek pieces that look the coach in professional and collegiate spots, in the United States and elsewhere throughout the globe. We seek pieces that look at the shifting importance of the coach culturally, that examine representations within various forms of media, and that reflect on inequalities within the coaching profession. In total, this collection seeks pieces that look at the cultural importance of coaches not simply on the field and inside sporting arenas but within the larger cultural, political, and sociological landscapes. Possible topics include:
- Glass Ceilings and Coaching
- White Privilege and the Coaching Profession
- Breaking down barriers in the coaching ranks
- The Disciplinarian: Masculinity as coaching praxis
- Homophobia and the “family friendly coach”
- Donald Trump and coaching allies
- Abuse and Coaches
- Bullying Culture
- Title IX
- New Media and Contemporary Coaches
- The Coach as Celebrity
While a key contribution of this project is identifying and unpacking dominant narratives about coaches and coaching through interdisciplinary, transnational and critical sports studies frameworks, it also seeks to illustrate counter discourses and resistant practices as well.
- Abstracts and CVs: May 1, 2018
- Drafts: September 1, 2018
Please submit abstracts/CVS or direct any questions to the collection editors: Dr. C. Richard King (crking@wsu.edu) and Dr. David J. Leonard (djl@wsu.edu)
