Sporting Blackness: Race, Embodiment, and Critical Muscle Memory on Screen

Sporting Blackness examines issues of race and representation in sports films, exploring what it means to embody, perform, play out, and contest blackness by representations of Black athletes on screen. By presenting new critical terms, Sheppard analyzes not only "skin in the game," or how racial representation shapes the genre's imagery, but also "skin in the genre," or the formal consequences of blackness on the sport film genre's modes, codes, and conventions. Through a rich interdisciplinary approach, Sheppard argues that representations of Black sporting bodies contain "critical muscle memories" embodied, kinesthetic, and cinematic histories that go beyond a film's plot to index, circulate, and reproduce broader narratives about Black sporting and non-sporting experiences in American society.

Author: Samantha N. Sheppard
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 06/16/2020
Pages: 264
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 9.00h x 5.90w x 0.80d
ISBN13: 9780520307797
ISBN10: 0520307798
BISAC Categories:
- Performing Arts | Film | General
- Social Science | Media Studies
- Social Science | Gender Studies

About the Author

Samantha N. Sheppard is the Mary Armstrong Meduski '80 Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University.