Campus, Brand, and Circus

Campus, Brand, and Circus: A Social History of College Sports provides students with a historical perspective on relevant issues regarding college athletics. The text chronicles the evolution of collegiate sport while exploring topics including youth rituals, the legal status of college athletes, masculine identities, gender markers, leisure cultures, racial hierarchies, and more.

Over the course of eight chapters, the text provides students with contemporary context for the study of college sports history, an overview of the inception of recreational and athletics activities by student associations in the 1800s, and insight on the rise of American football. The book addresses women in college sports, speaks to the African-American athlete experience, and examines the relationship between college sports and mass media. The final chapter analyzes the consolidation of Big Time collegiate sports, namely football and basketball, as national brands in sports entertainment and its continued effects on American culture.

Campus, Brand, and Circus provides unique insight into the world of college sports and explores vital trends in U. S. sports entertainment studies. It is well suited to courses in American sports history, college sports history, and the sociology of sports.

Juan Javier Pescador is a professor of history at Michigan State University, where he teaches courses in American sports history, college sports history, and American film history. He earned his Ph. D. from the University of Michigan in 1998. Dr. Pescador has published numerous research and educational books with university presses in the United States, Mexico, Spain, and Canada. He pioneered the field of sports history and college sports history at Michigan State and in the Big Ten. As a filmmaker, Dr. Pescador has directed and produced five documentary films on relevant issues like homophobia, transgender, youth incarceration and public arts.