Feminism, Sports, and Football in North Korea

Women’s football is one of the very few areas in which North Korea can display excellence to international audiences

While North Korea's political doctrine displays a revisionist character that combines nationalism with communism, traditional socialist feminism still influences its gender policy. The key tenet of socialist feminism includes the emancipation of women from economic dependency on their male counterparts and their liberation from confinement to household duties (Mojab 2015). ...
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Feminism, Sports, and Football in North Korea

Don’t Feel Guilty for Loving Football

Just be honest about it

It was a punishing number of hits every game, but the guy was tough. As author Louie Robinson described him in a December 1968 Ebony Magazine profile, O.J. Simpson was six feet, two inches tall, weighed 207 pounds and could run 100 yards in 9.4 seconds. A transfer to the University of ...
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Don’t Feel Guilty for Loving Football

Soccer and the Enduring Nonsense of Race

Austrian Marko Arnautović’s verbal assault on North Macedonia’s Ezgjan Alioski raises questions about race and nation in Europe’s past and present

_____ Soccer star Marko Arnautović made headlines last week, less for the goal he scored in the 89th minute of his native Austria’s European Cup game against North Macedonia than for his post-goal antics. Soccer celebrations often mix joy and aggression. But it quickly became clear to television viewers that Arnautović, criticized ...
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Soccer and the Enduring Nonsense of Race

COVID-19 Mirror on the Wall—Who’s the Bravest College of Them All?

Moving online and volunteering for vaccine trials this Fall requires a more prudent courage than reopening college campuses for classes and football

––––––– The next time you check the COVID-19 dashboard of your favorite university on your laptop screen, imagine asking: Who’s the bravest of them all? Pretend you’re like the Evil Queen in Snow White, who gazes in a mirror, asking who is the fairest of them all, in order to eliminate ...
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COVID-19 Mirror on the Wall—Who’s the Bravest College of Them All?

Argentina’s National Sport

On the uses and abuses of melancholic nostalgia

On June 30, fans of football all across ahe globe were struck (but not really surprised) by the defeat of an Argentine national team at the hands of an explosive France at the World Cup in Kazan, Russia. All across the world, Argentines and their sympathizers watched in sadness as ...
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Argentina’s National Sport

Unsportsmanlike Conduct

Donald Trump and the politics of football

Last fall, Donald Trump called protesting NFL players “sons of bitches” and demanded that they be kicked off the field and fired “right now.” Weeks ago, he disinvited the Super-Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles from the customary visit to the White House because “they disagree with our president” about proper observance of the national ...
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Unsportsmanlike Conduct