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.
My article “Beyond Master Narratives: Local Sources and Global Perspectives on Sport, Apartheid, and Liberation” has just been published in The International Journal of the History of Sport (2020).
