The National Communication Association (NCA) is the primary organization in the United States that focuses on the study of communication. As the mission statement states, "NCA is a scholarly society that works to enhance the research, teaching, and service produced by its members on topics of both intellectual and social significance." One of the challenges any academic discipline faces is how to translate the scholarship done by researchers into language accessible to a broader public. Thus, to their credit, NCA officials have been looking to find new ways of sharing the field's contributions beyond its academic journals.
If you visit the NCA website--and be forewarned, it ain't the prettiest site out there--you'll see a section on the home page called, "Featuring Members' Work on Communication and..." When I visited earlier today, I noticed a new addition to this section called "Sports and Communication." My first thought? "Hey, that's what I do! Maybe I'll be referenced!"
Well, to my disappointment, when I investigated further, I found that my work was not included. There were colleagues with well-established and well-earned reputations who were referenced. My co-authors on a communication and sport textbook, for example were both listed as "Available Experts." Indeed, all four of those folks are scholars and people for whom I have great respect. Yet NCA's page presents such a limited glimpse into the growing area of communication and sport scholarship. The citations listed are just fine (in fact, I find the essay about LSU talk radio fans especially good). But, on behalf of my colleagues who have published in NCA's journals (the apparent criterion on which these references were selected), I invite you to learn more about the range of scholarship in this area. And yes, I'm citing my own damned self, too:
Michael L. Butterworth, "Ritual in the 'Church of Baseball': Suppressing the Discourse of Democracy after 9/11," Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies
Michael L. Butterworth, "Race in 'The Race': Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Heroic Constructions of Whiteness," Critical Studies in Media Communication
Michael L. Butterworth, "The Politics of the Pitch: Claiming and Contesting Democracy Through the Iraqi National Soccer Team," Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies
Suzanne Enck-Wanzer, "All's Fair in Love and Sport: Black Masculinity and Domestic Violence in the News," Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies
Daniel A. Grano, "Muhammad Ali Versus the 'Modern Athlete': On Voice in Mediated Sports Culture," Critical Studies in Media Communication
Marie Hardin and Stacie Shain, "'Feeling Much Smaller than You Know You Are': The Fragmented Professional Identity of Female Sports Journalists," Critical Studies in Media Communication
Kurt Lindemann, "'I Can't Be Standing Up Out There': Communicative Performances of (Dis)Ability in Wheelchair Rugby," Text and Performance Quarterly
Tom Oates, "The Erotic Gaze in the NFL Draft," Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies
John M. Sloop, "Riding in Cars Between Men," Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies
Keep in mind, these represent only those articles published in NCA journals (and only those in the past few years). There are many, many more essays from recent years that have been published by other organizations. In any case, for those of you interested in this work, I hope this list proves more comprehensive than the one found at the NCA site.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
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4 comments:
I assume the authors listed are in alphabetical order? Not by order of relevance?
In all honesty, it is alphabetical. But it is kind of nice that I can list myself three times, no?
I would also add Hawhee's book, Bodily Arts, as well. I visited the page after you said something and was highly disappointed with how it highlights this area of research. And, yes, it is nice to have 3, but I have to ask why must you set the bar so high?! :) j/k
I love Hawhee's book. But she's careful to use the term "athletics" not "sports," specifically because she wants to define a relationship between rhetoric and athletics as classical arts and not get caught up in the institution of modern sport. In an RSQ article she even goes so far as to brush aside the over-use of sports metaphors in contemporary discourse. In either case, it's a great book.
As for the NCA page, I wrote to the Senior Manager of Communications to tell him I think they've left a lot out. He said, "We appreciate your insight and will add your suggestions to the page." I've yet to see those additions, but I'm willing to give them a little time.
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