Faculty
Daniel A. Nathan
Professor of American Studies 
Office: Tisch Learning Center 300
Phone: 518-580-5023
Email: dnathan@skidmore.edu
Like my grandfather and father, I was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and raised as an Orioles fan. Unlike them, however, I grew up in Flint, Michigan, of Roger & Me (1989) fame. I attended Allegheny College where I was a double History and English major, and spent part of my junior year studying in London. I earned my M.A. and Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Iowa. After teaching at Miami University in Ohio, for four years, I was the Fulbright Professor of North American Studies at the University of Tampere in Finland.
I have eclectic, wide-ranging interests. All my courses and most of my writing projects
are interdisciplinary and most engage the politics of cultural representation, popular
culture, and history. One of my primary areas of interest is American sport. My award-winning
book Saying It’s So: A Cultural History of the Black Sox Scandal (2003) engages all these subjects. I have also written essays and book, film, and
exhibition reviews for Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, American Quarterly,
American Studies, The International Journal of the History of Sport, Journal of American
Studies, Journal of Sport History, and the OAH Magazine of History. In addition, I
have collaborated with two former Skidmore students, Peter Berg and Erin Klemyk, on
an essay titled “‘The Truth Wrapped in a Package of Lies’: Hollywood, History, and
Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York” published in Lights, Camera, History: Portraying
the Past in Film (2007). I have also contributed chapters to numerous anthologies,
including Baseball in America and America in Baseball (2008), All-Stars and Movie
Stars: Sports in Film and History (2008), and Sport and the Law: Historical and Cultural
Intersections (2014). I have edited Rooting for the Home Team: Sport, Community, and Identity (2013) and Baltimore Sports: Stories from Charm City (2016), and co-edited with anthropologist George Gmelch Baseball Beyond Our Borders: An International Pastime (2017), and co-edited with Maureen M. Smith and Sarah K. Fields the award-winning
Sports through the Lens: Essays on 25 Iconic Photographs (2024).
My writing complements my teaching, as both stress interdisciplinarity and the multiple
ways that we can know the past. I have taught classes on the 1950s, how Hollywood
filmmakers have represented the American past, popular culture as public history,
sport and American culture, American autobiography, E. L. Doctorow’s America, global
perspectives of the United States, true crime in America, the Holocaust and American
culture, and the HBO series The Wire.
Active in the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH), I was the organization’s President (2013-2015). I have also served as the
editor of the Journal of Sport History and am on several editorial boards. Here at Skidmore, I have Chaired the Department
of American Studies, the Committee on Educational Policies and Planning, the Appointments
and Tenure Committee, and the Athletic Council.
The former Douglas Family Chair in American Culture, History, and Literary and Interdisciplinary Studies, I have given the John R. Betts Honor Address and been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, Skidmore’s Edwin M. Moseley Faculty Lectureship, and NASSH’s Roberta J. Park Award for Scholarly Distinction.
An avid traveler, I am also the proud father of (Skidmore student) Benjamin and Lehigh University alum Zoë Nathan.