Wayne State scholar to give view from baseball's cheap seats
Love baseball find your nerves are frayed, watching contenders vie for post-season play? Here's a season-appropriate distraction. The American Studies Department will host a talk by Lisa Doris Alexander of the Africana Studies Department at Wayne State University, who will discuss "The State of Race and Ethnicity in Major League Baseball: A View from the Cheap Seats," at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 18, in Davis Auditorium, Palamountain Hall. Admission is free and open to the public.
Alexander will draw on research from her forthcoming book When Baseball Isn't White, Straight and Male: The Media and Difference in the National Pastime for the talk.
According to the McFarland Publishers' release information, the book "analyzes how sportswriters discuss issues of race, ethnicity, nationality, sexual identity, age, and class within professional baseball from 1998 to the present. Each chapter looks at the media representations of a specific controversy including the 1998 home-run chase, Alex Rodriguez's historic contract singing, Barry Bonds's home-run chases, Mike Piazza's "I am not gay" press conference, Effa Manley's Hall of Fame induction, the celebration of Jackie Robinson Day, as well as the various incidents involving performance-enhancing drugs."
For background on Alexander and her research, please visit the author's web site here.
