Screening Sports – serie

As one of popular culture's most popular arenas, sports are often the subject of cinematic storytelling. But boxing films are special. There are more movies about boxing, by a healthy margin, than any other sport, and boxing accompanied and aided the medium's late nineteenth-century emergence as a popular mass entertainment. Many of cinema's most celebrated directors—from Oscar Micheaux to Martin Scorsese—made boxing films. And while the production of other types of sports movies generally corresponds with the current popularity of their subject, boxing films continue to be made regularly even after the sport has wilted from its once-prominent position in the sports hierarchy of the United States. From Edison's Leonard-Cushing Fight to The Joe Louis Story, Rocky, and beyond, this book explores why boxing has so consistently fascinated cinema and popular media culture by tracing how boxing movies inform the sport's meanings and uses from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century.

As one of popular culture's most popular arenas, sports are often the subject of cinematic storytelling. But boxing films are special. There are more movies about boxing, by a healthy margin, than any other sport, and boxing accompanied and aided the medium's late nineteenth-century emergence as a popular mass entertainment. Many of cinema's most celebrated directors—from Oscar Micheaux to Martin Scorsese—made boxing films. And while the production of other types of sports movies generally corresponds with the current popularity of their subject, boxing films continue to be made regularly even after the sport has wilted from its once-prominent position in the sports hierarchy of the United States. From Edison's Leonard-Cushing Fight to The Joe Louis Story, Rocky, and beyond, this book explores why boxing has so consistently fascinated cinema and popular media culture by tracing how boxing movies inform the sport's meanings and uses from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century.

The Basketball Film: A Cultural and Transmedia History reveals how stories about the game extend far beyond the court. From classic Hollywood dramas to independent documentaries, basketball films capture the rhythms of play while reflecting deeper struggles over race, identity, community, and aspiration. This groundbreaking study examines the basketball court as both a stage and a mirror for American life—where questions of belonging, opportunity, and cultural power are played out on and off the court. Moving across film, television, and video games, the book traces how basketball's visual culture has evolved alongside the sport's rise to global prominence. Through close readings of both celebrated and overlooked works, The Basketball Film offers an expansive and engaging portrait of how basketball has been imagined, represented, and mythologized across popular culture, revealing what the game continues to mean to audiences and players alike.