Sport and Memory in North America

Cultures and nations remember themselves with select bodily images, evocative rituals and texts. This volume illustrates how sport is used in the creation, maintenance and now global dissemination of a nation's cherished values. Carefully drawn cases of sport in North America - American baseball and football, figure skating and gymnastics, Canadian hockey and track and field, for example - show the potency of sport's "cultural work". The book captures uplifting images which are stressed in the public performance and national and international broadcasting of sport, but also notes the omissions and distortions of social reality that persist in sport performance and mass marketing in North America.

Stephen Wieting

Prologue, Stephen G. Wieting and Judy Polumbaum. Part 1 The social image in memory and representation: cultural identity, law and baseball, Sarah K. Fields; pride and prejudice - reflecting on sport heroes, national identity and crisis in Canada, Steven J. Jackson and Pam Ponic; remembering the black and gold - African Americans, sport memory and the University of Iowa, David R. McMahon. Part 2 The body in memory and representation: tobacco, health and the sports metaphor, Michelle McQuistan and Christopher Squier; drugs and numbers in the reporting of American sports, Michael A. Katovich; curling in Canada, Stephen G. Wieting and Danny Lamoureux. Part 3 The nation in celebration in global broadcasting: America's national pastime and Canadian nationalism, Sean Hayes; forcing the fairytale - narrative strategies in figure skating competition coverage, Bettina Fabos; the whole world isn't watching (but we thought they were) - the Super Bowl and United States solipsism, Christopher R. Martin and Jimmie L. Reeves; epilogue - the future of exchange between local culture and global trends, Stephen G. Wietling and Judy Polumbaum.