Re-examining American Football: The Performance and Preservation of American Masculinity
| dc.contributor.author | Knox, Skyler | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-06-25T20:06:21Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-06-25T20:06:21Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025-06-05 | |
| dc.description.abstract | From its inception, American football has been more than a game—it has served as a stage for asserting dominance, not only through physical competition, but also across broader social and ideological hierarchies. Departing from dominant football historiographies that center white elites, institutions, and figures as the architects of the sport’s success, this thesis re-examines football as a national institution that reinforces American masculinity through systems of racial and economic control—rooted in the exploitation of Black labor and the preservation of white male authority. Tracing football’s development from the post-slavery era through wartime mobilization, industrial expansion, and the rise of mass entertainment, I argue that the sport has long served a political function: to uphold a vision of masculinity shaped by racial hierarchy and capitalist logic. Drawing on the work of Harry Edwards, Teri A. McMurtry-Chubb, Thomas Oates, and William C. Rhoden, this thesis structured across three chapters, examines: football’s historical ties to the plantation economy and postbellum anxieties around race and gender; the shift from physical participation to symbolic power through fandom and spectatorship; and the NFL’s current business model, which profits from Black athletic labor while restricting Black leadership and upward mobility. Drawing on historical analysis and insights from my work in the NFL, this research positions football as a site where power is performed and reproduced through aestheticized violence, ritualized hierarchy, and reaffirmed national identity—revealing it as central to American masculinity and racialized capitalism. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1813/117069 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.publisher | Cornell University Library | |
| dc.rights | Attribution 4.0 International | en |
| dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | |
| dc.subject | American Football | |
| dc.subject | Africana Studies | |
| dc.title | Re-examining American Football: The Performance and Preservation of American Masculinity | |
| dc.type | dissertation or thesis |
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