Category: Fútbology

The Global Sport Lab at the University of Washington’s Jackson School of International Studies just released World Cup: The Syllabus, a free online resource “intended for anyone interested in learning more about the history and politics of the World Cup, curious about some of the current and past controversies, or just wants to understand a little more about why people care so very much about these global events that take place every four years.”

The syllabus features seven thematic sections — FIFA, Migrations, Protest and Resistance, Arts and Culture, Human Rights, Stadiums,Technology — each featuring concise intro essays, curated reading lists, and 4-6 discussion questions to guide reading and exploration.

I am proud to have been part of the project’s editorial team, which worked together flawlessly, almost like Cruyff’s Ajax or Pep Guardiola’s Barça. We hope you enjoy this intellectual journey through the world of global football!

The upcoming FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand/Aotearoa will make history: the first co-hosted WWC; first in the southern hemisphere; first with 32 teams; and first with guaranteed prize money for all players.

Historians Jean Williams and Brenda Elsey, and anthropologist Hillary Haldane led a wonderful session on the Football Scholars Forum focused on the politics, economics, culture, and history of the most popular event in women’s football.

Click on the link below to listen to the June 13, 2023, discussion.

Dr. Philipp Gollner invited Brenda Elsey (Hofstra University), Pablo M. Sierra (University of Rochester) and me on to The Assistant Professor of Football podcast to talk about what it’s like to “regularly teach, in American university classrooms, about football — its culture, its meaning, its history.”

As the show notes for the episode released on June 1, 2023, put it: “We talked about how that teaching is going, what would it be like to take a class with them, what do they assign, and how did they get into this subject in academia in the first place, and what good books are being written about the beautiful game beyond the well-known popular ones. And then we went on to opine more broadly, about the future of the game globally as well as here in the US, the next World Cup, why awful people run clubs, and what makes the beautiful game such a unique angle to understand the world.” 

Click on the link below to listen to the episode:

https://theassistantprofessoroffootball.buzzsprout.com/2052670/12964341-teaching-soccer-three-actual-professors-of-football-on-their-college-classes-and-soccer-literacy-in-the-u-s

The Football Scholars Forum, based in the History Department at Michigan State University, is set to celebrate its tenth anniversary!

Originally conceived as an online academic book club, FSF has evolved into a vibrant international soccer studies community. Professors, graduate students, journalists, fans, and practitioners take part in 90-minute sessions. A distinguishing feature of FSF is the participation of authors willing to engage with an audience of knowledgeable fútbologists. Out of these conversations have sprung new sources and ideas, scholarly collaborations, publications, conference papers, and grants.

The 2019-20 schedule features a terrific lineup of books and authors. The season opens on September 24 (3pm US ET) with Futbolera: A History of Women and Sports in Latin America by Brenda Elsey and Joshua Nadel. Futbolera is “beautifully written, meticulously researched, incredibly thoughtful,” writes author and historian Amy Bass. “A must read,” says Laurent Dubois of Duke University.

On October 30 (3pm US ET), it’s time for Football and Colonialism: Body and Popular Culture in Urban Mozambique by Nuno Domingos. One reviewer of the book notes how “as Domingos effortlessly oscillates between colonial policy and indigenous response, he brings the city [of Maputo] alive, and at the heart of the text are the African players themselves.”

The following session is planned for December but is not centered around a book. Instead it focuses on the six-part documentary film This Is Football. Released on the Amazon Prime platform and boosted by endorsements from major companies, this series is likely to elicit a range of critiques from the experts. [Watch the trailer here.]

After the holiday break, FSF rekindles the excitement of the 2019 Women’s World Cup with a session on Caitlin Murray’s National Team: The Inside Story of the Women Who Changed Soccer. Sports Illustrated‘s Grant Wahl praises the book for “shedding new light on all the major tournaments while revealing fascinating details on [the USWNT’s] decades-long fight for better treatment from the men who run soccer.”

The last two sessions will grapple with David Goldblatt’s new 700-page book The Age of Football: The Global Game in the 21st Century. In all seriousness a British journalist called him “not merely the best football historian writing today, he is possibly the best there has ever been.” The dates for both the Murray and Goldblatt events are yet to be determined so stay tuned for updates.

A friendly reminder that all FSF events are free and open to the public. Anyone interested in participating should contact Dr. Alex Galarza (now at the University of Delaware) or me.