Join historians Dr. Amira Rose Davis and Dr. Frank Guridy in a conversation with award-winning sportswriter & cultural critic, Howard Bryant about his recent book, "Full Dissidence: Notes from an Uneven Playing Field". The panelists will discuss the recent upsurge in athlete activism and the ongoing political struggle against racism & social injustice inside and outside the sporting world."
Event Registration link
https://columbiauniversity.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0scuyrrDouHNQXmemPeoxi96arSmgLz0ne
Howard Bryant is the author of nine books, Full Dissidence: Notes From an Uneven Playing Field, The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America and the Politics of Patriotism, The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron, Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power, and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball, Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston, the three-book Legends sports series for middle-grade readers, and Sisters and Champions: The True Story of Venus and Serena Williams, illustrated by Floyd Cooper, and contributed essays to 14 others.
He is a two-time Casey Award winner (Shut Out, 2003, The Last Hero, 2011) for best baseball book of the year, and a 2003 finalist for the Society for American Baseball Research Seymour Medal. The Heritage was the recipient of the 2019 Nonfiction Award from the American Library Association’s Black Caucus and the Harry Shaw and Katrina Hazard Donald Award for Outstanding Work in African American Studies awarded by the Popular Culture Association.
He has been senior writer for ESPN since 2007 and has served as the sports correspondent for NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday since 2006. In 2017, he served as the guest editor for the Best American Sports Writing anthology.
Previously, Mr. Bryant worked at the Washington Post, the Boston Herald, The Record (Hackensack,
NJ), the San Jose Mercury News and the Oakland Tribune. He has won numerous awards, was a finalist for the National Magazine Award in 2016 and 2018, both for commentary, and earned the 2016 Salute to Excellence Award from the National Association of Black Journalists. In addition, Mr. Bryant has appeared in several documentaries, including Baseball: The Tenth Inning and Jackie Robinson, both directed by Ken Burns, and Major League Legends: Hank Aaron, produced by the Smithsonian and Major League Baseball.
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Amira Rose Davis is Assistant Professor of History and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at Penn State University where she specializes in 20th Century American History with an emphasis on race, gender, sports and politics. She is currently working on her book manuscript, “Can’t Eat a Medal”: The Lives and Labors of Black Women Athletes in the Age of Jim Crow which traces the long history of black women's athletic labor and symbolic representation. Additionally, Davis provides sports commentary and opinion writing for public venues such as NPR, ESPN, CBC and BBC and is the co-host of the feminist sports podcast, Burn It All Down.
Recent Publications: "No League of Their Own: Baseball, Black Women and the Politics of Representation," Radical History Review, Issue 125, May 2016; “On the Courts of Druid Hill: Lucy Diggs Slowe and the Rise of Organized Black Tennis” in Baltimore Sports History: Stories from Charm City, ed. Daniel Nathan. Sport, Culture, and Society Series, University of Arkansas Press, August 2016
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Frank A. Guridy specializes in sport history, urban history, and the history of the African Diaspora in the Americas. His forthcoming book, The Sports Revolution: How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athletics (University of Texas Press, 2021) explores how Texas-based sports entrepreneurs and athletes from marginalized backgrounds transformed American sporting culture during the 1960s and 1970s, the highpoint of the Black Freedom and Second-Wave feminist movements. His first book, Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow (University of North Carolina Press, 2010), won the Elsa Goveia Book Prize from the Association of Caribbean Historians and the Wesley-Logan Book Prize, conferred by the American Historical Association. He is also the co-editor of Beyond el Barrio: Everyday Life in Latino/a America (NYU Press, 2010), with Gina Pérez and Adrian Burgos, Jr. His articles have appeared in Kalfou, Radical History Review, Caribbean Studies, Social Text, and Cuban Studies. His fellowships and awards include the Scholar in Residence Fellowship at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Ray A. Billington Professorship in American History at Occidental College and the Huntington Library. He is also an award-winning teacher, receiving the Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award from the University of Texas at Austin, and, more recently, the Mark Van Doren Award for Teaching at Columbia. His next book project, Assembly in the Fragmented City: A History of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, examines the iconic structure’s impact on the emergence of Los Angeles as a global city.
