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Journal Articles by Kyle Kusz
Przegląd Narodowościowy / Review of Nationalities, 2019
Journal of Hate Studies, 2018
In this article, the author offers a critical contextual analysis that seeks to answer Giroux's (... more In this article, the author offers a critical contextual analysis that seeks to answer Giroux's (2015) call for scholars to map and critically examine the "cultural circuits, points of connection, internalized values, discourses and pedagogies.. . responsible for both promoting and legitimating the likes of Donald Trump" (Don't Get Distracted by the Buffoonery section, para. 1). To this end, this essay explores how the Trump candidacy and presidency , the rise of the Alt Right, and the appeal of New England Patriots quarterback, Tom Brady, to his fans who have nicknamed him as the 'Greatest Of All Time' (i.e. The G.O.A.T.), are all linked by 1) the lioniza-tion of a particular performance of white masculinity as omnipotent, and 2) a desire to unapologetically revitalize white male privilege and prerogative as the unquestioned norm across American culture. The author articulates these three cultural sites together-Trump's racial and gender performance as a politician, the alt-right's visions of white national manhood, and cultural representations of Brady as the embodiment of white male omnipo-tence-to emphasize the point that the white supremacist and anti-feminist ideas expressed by Trump, his administration, and the alt-right are not just beliefs held just by a handful of white racists with 'hate in their hearts.' Instead, these retrogressive and anti-democratic ideas about race and gender have been circulating and cross-pollinating across American film, television , and sport media (among other cultural sites) over the past decade and have primed anxious white men to perceive the Alt Right and Trump's efforts to revitalize white male prerogative in American civic life as reasonable.
published @ theconversation.com
published @ theallrounder.com
Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 2007
Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 2001
Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 2007
Film Review by Kyle Kusz
International Review for The Sociology of Sport, 2002
International Review for The Sociology of Sport, 1997
Book Reviews by Kyle Kusz
During the 2014 World Cup, I was overcome with tears as I watched news coverage of tens of thousa... more During the 2014 World Cup, I was overcome with tears as I watched news coverage of tens of thousands of Americans standing and singing soccer songs at viewing parties held at shopping malls and football stadia all across the country when the US Men's team played. As an American whose passion for 'the beautiful game' began as a seven year-old, I never imagined I would witness such a scene in my lifetime. Yet, as I watched those images of thousands of Americans at those World Cup viewing parties I felt a bit of inarticulable melancholy about it all. It was only after reading Michael Agovino's The Soccer Diaries: An American's Thirty-Year Pursuit of the International Game that I recognized how my melancholy was grounded, in part, in the growing popularity of soccer in the United States and how be(com)ing a fan of US soccer prior to 1994 meant something that now may be lost with the contemporary mainstreaming of soccer in the US. Agovino's book also forced me to grapple with what exactly it means to me to be an American who loves soccer and how I have employed my identification with soccer to construct particular stories about myself for others, and to myself. Before the suburbanization of youth soccer training in the US (Andrews, 1999), and unlike many places in Europe, South America, and Africa, where soccer is central within national sporting culture, growing up as a soccer lover for many Americans meant trave-ling cultural routes and existing in cultural spaces not lit by the bright lights of the American mainstream. For a white middle class kid excelling in the sport meant connecting with Americans whose racial, ethnic, cultural, and class backgrounds are frequently othered by/in the American mainstream. It meant veering off course from the post-World War II mainstream American imperative to assimilate into white suburban Americana. For me, like Agovino, traveling these routes through soccer played a formative role in shaping my sense of self and it enabled me to recognize the limits and specificity of my world view and introduced me to a world beyond my neighborhood and imagination. Simultaneously, it planted a seed of distrust in ethnocentric tendencies learned from family , community, and mainstream American culture. Indeed, my unease with what I imagined I could be witnessing at these viewing parties rested in the recognition that 2014 might be a turning point where local American soccer cultures lose their subcultural status and get infested by that strain of bombastic Americanism that reaffirms dominant
Drafts by Kyle Kusz
Sport & Militarism (Routledge: New York), 2017
Papers by Kyle Kusz
Journal of sport history, Jul 1, 2023
Ethnic and Racial Studies, Feb 24, 2014
Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith is an ethnographic account of long-term recovery in post-Katri... more Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith is an ethnographic account of long-term recovery in post-Katrina New Orleans. It is also a sobering exploration of the privatization of vital social services under market-driven governance. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, public agencies subcontracted disaster relief to private companies that turned the humanitarian work of recovery into lucrative business. These enterprises profited from the very suffering that they failed to ameliorate, producing a second-order disaster that exacerbated inequalities based on race and class and leaving residents to rebuild almost entirely on their own. Filled with the often desperate voices of residents who returned to New Orleans, Markets of Sorrow , Labors of Faith describes the human toll of disaster capitalism and the affect economy it has produced. While for-profit companies delayed delivery of federal resources to returning residents, faith-based and nonprofit groups stepped in to rebuild, compelled by the moral pull of charity and the emotional rewards of volunteer labor. Adams traces the success of charity efforts, even while noting an irony of neoliberalism, which encourages the very same for-profit companies to exploit these charities as another market opportunity. In so doing, the companies profit not once but twice on disaster.
Przegląd Narodowościowy / Review of Nationalities, 2019
Journal of Hate Studies, 2018
In this article, the author offers a critical contextual analysis that seeks to answer Giroux's (... more In this article, the author offers a critical contextual analysis that seeks to answer Giroux's (2015) call for scholars to map and critically examine the "cultural circuits, points of connection, internalized values, discourses and pedagogies.. . responsible for both promoting and legitimating the likes of Donald Trump" (Don't Get Distracted by the Buffoonery section, para. 1). To this end, this essay explores how the Trump candidacy and presidency , the rise of the Alt Right, and the appeal of New England Patriots quarterback, Tom Brady, to his fans who have nicknamed him as the 'Greatest Of All Time' (i.e. The G.O.A.T.), are all linked by 1) the lioniza-tion of a particular performance of white masculinity as omnipotent, and 2) a desire to unapologetically revitalize white male privilege and prerogative as the unquestioned norm across American culture. The author articulates these three cultural sites together-Trump's racial and gender performance as a politician, the alt-right's visions of white national manhood, and cultural representations of Brady as the embodiment of white male omnipo-tence-to emphasize the point that the white supremacist and anti-feminist ideas expressed by Trump, his administration, and the alt-right are not just beliefs held just by a handful of white racists with 'hate in their hearts.' Instead, these retrogressive and anti-democratic ideas about race and gender have been circulating and cross-pollinating across American film, television , and sport media (among other cultural sites) over the past decade and have primed anxious white men to perceive the Alt Right and Trump's efforts to revitalize white male prerogative in American civic life as reasonable.
published @ theconversation.com
published @ theallrounder.com
Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 2007
Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 2001
Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 2007
International Review for The Sociology of Sport, 2002
International Review for The Sociology of Sport, 1997
During the 2014 World Cup, I was overcome with tears as I watched news coverage of tens of thousa... more During the 2014 World Cup, I was overcome with tears as I watched news coverage of tens of thousands of Americans standing and singing soccer songs at viewing parties held at shopping malls and football stadia all across the country when the US Men's team played. As an American whose passion for 'the beautiful game' began as a seven year-old, I never imagined I would witness such a scene in my lifetime. Yet, as I watched those images of thousands of Americans at those World Cup viewing parties I felt a bit of inarticulable melancholy about it all. It was only after reading Michael Agovino's The Soccer Diaries: An American's Thirty-Year Pursuit of the International Game that I recognized how my melancholy was grounded, in part, in the growing popularity of soccer in the United States and how be(com)ing a fan of US soccer prior to 1994 meant something that now may be lost with the contemporary mainstreaming of soccer in the US. Agovino's book also forced me to grapple with what exactly it means to me to be an American who loves soccer and how I have employed my identification with soccer to construct particular stories about myself for others, and to myself. Before the suburbanization of youth soccer training in the US (Andrews, 1999), and unlike many places in Europe, South America, and Africa, where soccer is central within national sporting culture, growing up as a soccer lover for many Americans meant trave-ling cultural routes and existing in cultural spaces not lit by the bright lights of the American mainstream. For a white middle class kid excelling in the sport meant connecting with Americans whose racial, ethnic, cultural, and class backgrounds are frequently othered by/in the American mainstream. It meant veering off course from the post-World War II mainstream American imperative to assimilate into white suburban Americana. For me, like Agovino, traveling these routes through soccer played a formative role in shaping my sense of self and it enabled me to recognize the limits and specificity of my world view and introduced me to a world beyond my neighborhood and imagination. Simultaneously, it planted a seed of distrust in ethnocentric tendencies learned from family , community, and mainstream American culture. Indeed, my unease with what I imagined I could be witnessing at these viewing parties rested in the recognition that 2014 might be a turning point where local American soccer cultures lose their subcultural status and get infested by that strain of bombastic Americanism that reaffirms dominant
Sport & Militarism (Routledge: New York), 2017
Journal of sport history, Jul 1, 2023
Ethnic and Racial Studies, Feb 24, 2014
Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith is an ethnographic account of long-term recovery in post-Katri... more Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith is an ethnographic account of long-term recovery in post-Katrina New Orleans. It is also a sobering exploration of the privatization of vital social services under market-driven governance. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, public agencies subcontracted disaster relief to private companies that turned the humanitarian work of recovery into lucrative business. These enterprises profited from the very suffering that they failed to ameliorate, producing a second-order disaster that exacerbated inequalities based on race and class and leaving residents to rebuild almost entirely on their own. Filled with the often desperate voices of residents who returned to New Orleans, Markets of Sorrow , Labors of Faith describes the human toll of disaster capitalism and the affect economy it has produced. While for-profit companies delayed delivery of federal resources to returning residents, faith-based and nonprofit groups stepped in to rebuild, compelled by the moral pull of charity and the emotional rewards of volunteer labor. Adams traces the success of charity efforts, even while noting an irony of neoliberalism, which encourages the very same for-profit companies to exploit these charities as another market opportunity. In so doing, the companies profit not once but twice on disaster.
International Review for the Sociology of Sport, Mar 1, 2001
Routledge eBooks, May 30, 2019
Sociology of Sport Journal
Existing across multiple media platforms, Barstool Sports (“Barstool”) is one of the most importa... more Existing across multiple media platforms, Barstool Sports (“Barstool”) is one of the most important sport brands in the United States. While Barstool’s critics frequently assert that the company is “racist,” few, if any, detail how their racial politics work. Through a brief genealogy of Barstool’s cultural history and a close critical reading of “The Barstool Documentary Series,” we show how Barstool’s racial politics operate through gender—specifically the affective appeal of Big Man sovereignty and the homosocial bonds of White fratriarchy —to create and normalize racially exclusive and White male-dominant social worlds that dovetail remarkably with racial and gender ideas that organize what Maskovsky calls Trump’s “White nationalist postracialism” and the Proud Boys’ “Western chauvinism.”
Sport and Militarism, 2017
The Palgrave Handbook of Masculinity and Sport, 2019
In this chapter, I critically examine cultural representations—advertisements, journalistic accou... more In this chapter, I critically examine cultural representations—advertisements, journalistic accounts, social media, documentaries, and even film and television cameos—of New England Patriots’ quarterback, Tom Brady to show how they articulate with many similar racial, gender, and class ideas and affects that organize the Trump campaign and presidency. More specifically, I illuminate how Brady’s white masculinity is often coded as unapologetic about his socio-economic privileges, omnipotent in his manliness, and as a master of his body and athletic craft. In short, Brady embodies a living fantasy of white male omnipotence that serves symbolically as an imagined solution to white male anxiety for those who feel that the United States is in the midst of a culture war against white men and traditional American culture and values. In each of these ways, cultural (and self-) representations of Brady’s white masculinity showcase the new preferred representational logics used to render whit...
... Additionally, media stories which celebrated extreme sports (or alternative or action sports ... more ... Additionally, media stories which celebrated extreme sports (or alternative or action sports as they are now increasingly called) as a ... first espoused by our (white male) American forefathers, expressed contemporary white desires not only to re-center white masculinity within ...
The author offers some developing thoughts on a domestic White cultural nationalism that emerged ... more The author offers some developing thoughts on a domestic White cultural nationalism that emerged from the ashes of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on
Ethnic and Racial Studies
International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 2015
Review of Nationalities
Using conjunctural analysis and informed by insights drawn from critical whiteness studies, sport... more Using conjunctural analysis and informed by insights drawn from critical whiteness studies, sport studies, and masculinity studies, I offer some developing interpretations on two inter-related questions. First, how sport has been used to cultivate and popularize the proto-fascist white nationalist project(s) currently gripping the United States. And second, how sport facilitates the production and popularization of the unapologetic and omnipotent performance of white masculinity that seems central to the popular appeal of this contemporary American white nationalist assemblage. To address these questions, I critically examine the patterned ways Donald Trump, first as candidate and then as President, has used sport to promote his white nationalist project. Additionally, I critically unpack the writings and performances of two white male cultural figures who are key figures within Trump nationalist assemblage. The first, Richard Spencer, coined the label ‘alternative right’. The secon...
International Review for the Sociology of Sport