Events Calendar

How can the history of activism in sports help us understand the dynamics shaping conflicts today? How might labor relations in sport be imagined differently? How does the structure of sporting entertainment provide opportunities and obstacles to activism, and how can activists navigate these challenges?

As fans flock to sports arenas to cheer for their favorite teams, these spaces are simultaneously important societal battlegrounds. From acts of political protest by players to legislative debates about who can compete on school teams, athletics are at the center of today’s culture wars. Join us for the Obermann Arts and Humanities Symposium “Sports, Power, and Resistance: Legacies and Futures” as leading scholars of history, sociology, cinema and media studies, rhetoric, and cultural studies map the past, explore the present, and chart future paths in the contested terrain of sports as a political force. 

This keynote address will be given by 2023-24 Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor, Samantha N. Sheppard.

Dr. Sheppard is an Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies in the Department of Performing and Media Arts and Cornell University. She received her BA in Film & Television Studies and Women and Gender Studies from Dartmouth College and her MA and PhD in Cinema and Media Studies from University of California, Los Angeles. She also holds a graduate certificate in Women's Studies from UCLA's Department of Gender Studies.  

Dr. Sheppard's research interests include Black cultural production and production cultures, African American representation in cinema, television studies, sports films, feminist media studies, embodiment studies, and critical race theory. She writes extensively on issues of race, gender, and representation in film, television, and digital media. She teaches courses on global cinema, sports films, contemporary television, African American film history, popular culture, women filmmakers, and blackness on screen.

Learn more about Dr. Sheppard here.

This event is a part of the Sports, Power, and Resistance: Legacies and Futures Obermann Arts and Humanities Symposium. Organized by well-known scholars of sport, media and culture, Thomas Oates (American Studies and Journalism & Mass Communication) and Travis Vogan (Journalism & Mass Communication and American Studies), this symposium will contextualize the contemporary politicized sportscape within a long and significant history of political movements through sports. 

Free and open to all.