Playing Politics: Sport, Power and Conflict in US History
Over the past decades, sport has emerged as a significant field of inquiry within U.S. history and political studies. From the nineteenth century to the present, sporting practices, institutions, and spectacles have played a crucial role in shaping political identities, social hierarchies, and forms of governance in the United States and elsewhere. Sport has functioned as a site for the construction of nationalism and citizenship, the projection of U.S. power abroad, and the mediation of conflicts between the state and civil society.
Scholars have increasingly highlighted that sport has never been a politically neutral or purely recreational domain. Historians such as David K. Wiggins, Patrick Miller, Rob Ruck, and Amy Bass have highlighted the centrality of sport in the making and contestation of racial order. Feminist and scholars of gender, including Susan Cahn and Jaime Schultz, have examined sport as a key terrain in the regulation of bodies, the production of gender norms, and the politicization of women’s participation in public life. Labor and economic historians have increasingly analyzed sport as a workplace and as an industry, focusing on athlete labor, unionization, and the commodification of performance, thereby linking sports history to broader debates on capitalism, class relations, and state regulation.
These historiographical developments acquire renewed urgency in the current conjuncture. The United States is about to host two of the most visible global sporting events: the 2026 FIFA World Cup, organized jointly with Canada and Mexico, and the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Los Angeles. These forthcoming sports mega-events have already sparked public debates over different issues that echo long-standing historical dynamics linking sport to state power, the economy, and international projection. As in earlier moments of U.S history - such as the 1904 St. Louis Olympics, the 1932 and 1984 Los Angeles Games, or all the Cold War-era politicized international sport competitions - these events underscore the extent to which sport operates as a political arena rather than a mere cultural spectacle.
The tenth issue of USAbroad invites contributions that explore the role of sport in U.S. politics and history. We seek articles that analyze sport as a political arena in its own right - one that has both reflected and actively shaped struggles over power, rights, and belonging. We encourage submissions that bridge political, social, economic, sport, and cultural history and that broaden the chronological and methodological scope of existing scholarship.
We invite articles from all historical disciplines and approaches, but papers addressing the following threads and sub-threads are particularly welcome:
- Social and political histories focusing on sport as a site of struggle, including:
- the role of sport in reproducing or challenging racial, gender, sexual, and class hierarchies;
- athlete activism, protest, and resistance;
- sport as a space of labor conflict, including unions, strikes, and collective bargaining;
- the policing, regulation, and disciplining of bodies through sport.
- Articles focusing on the relationship between sport and political institutions, comprising:
- the role of local, state, and federal governments in promoting, regulating, or repressing sport;
- sport, citizenship, and inclusion/exclusion (immigration, race, gender, disability);
- sport in schools, the military, prisons, and other state institutions;
- the role of sport in universities, including its economic and real estate impact;
- public funding, infrastructure, and the politics of sports mega-events.
- Intellectual and ideological analyses of how sport has been theorized, legitimized, and contested, including:
- political thought, social science, and media discourses on sport and democracy;
- feminist, anti-racist, and Marxist critiques of sport in the United States;
- sport and the construction of American values.
- Histories addressing the entanglements of sport, markets, and power, including:
- commercialization, professionalization, and corporate control of sport in the US;
- sport, media, and cultural industries;
- history of labor exploitation linked to sport mega-events.
- Contributions situating U.S. sport within a broader international context, including:
- sport and U.S. imperialism, diplomacy, and soft power;
- transnational circulation of athletes, sporting models, and political ideas;
- Cold War, post–Cold War, and contemporary geopolitics of sport;
- the relationship between sport mega-events, the threat of terrorist attack, and national security;
- the environmental impact of US sport mega-events.
Please submit your abstract (500 words max) and your CV (2 pages max) to usabroad@unibo.it by March 15, 2026. Successful applicants will be notified by the 1st of April, 2026, at the latest.
The selection of abstracts will be based on a range of criteria, including scientific originality, clarity of the proposal submitted, use of primary sources, and adherence to the themes of the call for papers. Abstracts that do not clearly address these criteria will not be considered for publication.
Please note that, if your application is successful, you will need to submit a full 7000-word article by July 31, 2026.
More info can be found at http://usabroad.unibo.it/
