American Experience presents a virtual PAST FORWARD conversation exploring the role of international politics and nationalism at the Olympic Games. This conversation is inspired in part by our streaming films The Boys of ’36 and Jesse Owens.
In this conversation, panelists will examine the political motives behind competing at and hosting the Olympics. They will also question whether the Games themselves should be thought of as an event fostering peace or as a soft-power battleground for superpowers, examining the role of the United States in creating both of these perceptions. The conversation will seek to understand how the ambitions of individual athletes fit within a nation state’s view of the Games as a means toward national glory, throughout history and today.
Panelists:
Dave Zirin writes about the politics of sports for the Nation Magazine. He is their first sports writer in 150 years of existence. Winner of Sport in Society and Northeastern University School of Journalism’s ‘Excellence in Sports Journalism’ Award, Zirin is also the host of Edge of Sports Television on The Real News Network and the Edge of Sports Podcast. He has been called “the best sportswriter in the United States,” by Robert Lipsyte. Dave Zirin is, in addition, a columnist for the Progressive.
Kendra Gage is an Assistant Professor in Teaching in History at the University of California, Riverside. She received her doctoral degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in the department of History. Her research and teaching focus on 20th Century America, Sports and Olympics History, the American West, Black Feminist Thought and the Civil Rights Movement. She is currently reworking her manuscript for publication Creating the Black California Dream: Virna Canson and the Black Freedom Struggle in the Golden State’s Capital, 1940-1988,” which uses the life of Virna Canson as a lens for incorporating Sacramento’s activities within the larger historical framework of the Civil Rights Movement.
The discussion will be moderated by Adriane Lentz-Smith. Adriane is an Associate Professor of History at Duke University, where she teaches courses on the Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives, Modern America, and History in Fact and Fiction. A scholar of African American history as well as the histories of the twentieth-century United States and the US & the World, Lentz Smith is the author of Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I (Harvard University Press, 2009), as well as numerous other scholarly articles and reviews.
Official Website: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/boys36/
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/owens/
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