Sexual Sports Rhetoric: Historical and Media Contexts of Violence (review)

Linda K. Fuller, a professor of communications at Worcester State College and a senior fellow at Northwestern University, has put together a reader focusing on sexual sports rhetoric and the various contexts of violence in sport, media, and literature. The authors of the articles come from a wide range of disciplines and institutions. In all, there are twenty-six contributions and twenty articles.

The book is broken down into six parts with three to five essays in each section followed by references at the end. Part one, for example, is entitled “Sport Violence Per Se” and deals with violence pertaining to ice hockey mainly focusing on Canada. Other segments cover topics including historical perspectives, sports literature, broadcast media, visual media, and classic case studies.

Some essays or chapters that stand out as not being mainstream might be David “Turbo” Thompson’s “Hot Wheels and High Heels” featuring women as stock car racers, Anne Price’s essay on football hooliganism in the United Kingdom, and Maureen Margaret Smith’s critique of “The Jim Rome Show” as being overly macho and at times racist.

In general, readers should find these essays both stimulating and provocative. One minor criticism of the collection of essays might be that there is little or no recognition that the position of women in sport has improved over the last three to four decades. The essays make clear, however, that there is still a long way to go.