Sport and Society in the Middle East: An Alternate Narrative of Middle Eastern History for the American College Classroom

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Notes

¹ Such surveys can be found at the Harris Poll website. Available at http://www.harrisinteractive.com, accessed 20 April 2009.

² A great place to start is David L. Vanderwerken (ed.) (1990) Sport in the Classroom: Teaching Sport-Related Courses in the Humanities (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses).

³ See, for example, Donald McRae (2003) Heroes without a Country: America's Betrayal of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens (New York: Ecco/Harper Collins).

⁴ For more on Billie Jean King, see King (1988) We Have Come a Long Way: The Story of Women's Tennis (New York: McGraw Hill). For more on Title IX legislation, see, for example, John Thelin (2000) Good sports? Historical perspectives on the political economy of intercollegiate athletics in the era of Title IX, 1972–1999, Journal of Higher Education, 7(4), pp. 391–410.

⁵ For the role of basketball in Obama's life, see Alexander Wolff (2009) The audacity of hoops: How basketball helped shape Obama, Sports Illustrated (January 13).

⁶ Franklin Foer (2004) How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization (New York: Harper Collins); and David Goldblatt (2006) The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer (New York: Riverhead Books).

⁷ For example, see Michael Wilzinger English football's fortunes fade in global downturn, Spiegal Online International 16 January 2009. Available at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,601703,00.html, accessed January 25, 2009).

⁸ For a description of these celebrations, see (2008) Wild celebrations as Turkey advances, Spiegel Online International, June 21, 2008. Available at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,561207,00.htm, accessed September 19, 2008.

⁹ A number of factors might explain the relative paucity of sports-related research in the Middle East, ranging from the centrality of texts related to Islam to the Orientalist fascination with the Eastern ‘other.’ Although historians and other academics have ignored this history, Middle Eastern journalists have not; the most engaging histories of sport in the region have appeared largely piecemeal in the major dailies and weeklies published in the region.

¹⁰ The most prominent writer in this field is J. A. Mangan. See (2006) A Sport Loving Society: Victorian and Edwardian Middle Class England at Play (Oxford: Routledge).

¹¹ Mangan addresses this phenomenon in detail. See, for example, his book (1986) The Games Ethic and Imperialism: Aspects of the Diffusion of an Ideal (London: Penguin Books).

¹² There are several versions of the Dinshaway incident. One useful description is Keith David Watenpaugh's (2006) Why Haditha reminds this historian of an awful chapter in British history, History News Network, June 5, 2006. Available at: http://hnn.us/articles/26283.html04, accessed September 15, 2008).

¹³ Muhammad El-Sayed (2000) Ruled by the game, Al-Ahram Weekly Online 681 (March 11–17, 2000). Available at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/681/sp11.htm, accessed September 15, 2008.

¹⁴ Houshang Chehabi A short history of Iranian soccer, Iran Nameh, 17(1). Available at: http://www.fis-iran.org/en/irannameh/volxvii/iranian-soccer-history, accessed June 17, 2009.

¹⁵ For an example of this, see Edward Atiyah (1947) An Arab Tells His Story: A Study in Loyalties (London: John Murray).

¹⁶ For more on sport and education in Egypt, see Donald Reid (1983) Turn of the century Egyptian school days, Comparative Education Review, 27(3), pp. 374–393.

¹⁷ Examining how development of sports facilities affected the spatial geography of Middle Eastern cities is no mean task. In the case of Alexandria, for example, one must use narrative accounts, early maps, and photographs in order to reconstruct the geographic narrative. For Alexandria, a useful place to start is Jean-Marc Ran Oppenheim (1991) Twilight of a colonial ethos: The Alexandria Sporting Club, 1890–1956, PhD Thesis, Columbia University.

¹⁸ For a treatment of Algerian sport under colonialism, see Youssef Fates (2004) Football in Algeria: Between violence and politics, in: Gary Armstrong and Richard Giulianotti (eds), Football in Africa: Conflict, Conciliation, Community (London: Palgrave MacMillan).

¹⁹ See Shaun Lopez (2009) Football as national allegory: Al-Ahram and the Olympics in 1920s Egypt, History Compass, 7(1), pp. 282–305.

²⁰ Wilson Jacob (2005) Working out Egypt: Masculinity and subject formation between colonial modernity and nationalism, 1870–1940, PhD Thesis, New York University.

²¹ John Naugthright (1997) Masculinity, muscular Islam and popular culture: ‘Coloured’ rugby's cultural symbolism in working class, Cape Town c.1930–1970, International Journal of the History of Sport, 14(1), pp. 184–199.

²² See Sulayman Khalaf (2000) Politics of newly invented traditions in the Gulf: Camel racing in the United Arab Emirates, Ethnology, 39(3), pp. 243–261.

²³ For an interesting example, see stories about Youra Eshaya, an Assyrian soccer star of the 1950s who played for the Iraqi national team, see Assyrian Information Medium Sports Page . Available at: http://www.edessa.com/sports/youra.htm, accessed November 12, 2008).

²⁴ Perhaps the best treatment of the relationship between Muslim immigrants and French sports is Paul Silverstein (2000) Sporting faith: Islam, soccer, and the French nation-State, Social Text 18(4), pp. 25–53.

²⁵ Ian Henry, Mahfoud Amara, & Mmansour al-Tauqi (2003) Sport, Arab nationalism, and the Pan-Arab Games, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 38(3), pp. 295–310.

²⁶ The best work in English on women's sports in Iran is Jenny Steel and Sophie Richter-Devroe (2003) The development of women's football in Iran: A perspective on the future for women's sport in the Islamic Republic, Iran, 41, pp. 315–322. The 2006 Iranian feature film Offside (dir. by Jafar Panahi) is also an interesting look into the challenges faced by female soccer fans in Iran. For another recent treatment of women's sports in the region, see Nicole Sobecki (2009) She Shoots, She Scores: Skirting religion and convention, Turkish women are taking to the soccer pitch, Global Post Online, http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/turkey/090429/turkey-football-womens. Last accessed August 21, 2009.

²⁷ The most detailed treatment of the topic is Tamir Sorek (2007) Arab Soccer in a Jewish State: The Integrative Enclave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

²⁸ Simon Freeman (2005) Baghdad FC: Iraq's Football Story: A Hidden History of Sport and Tyranny (London: John Murray).

²⁹ Julian Linden (2007) Iraq's Asian Cup win transcends sport, Reuters. Available at: http://www.reuters.com/article/sportsNews/idUSSYD28314920070730, accessed January 31, 2009.

³⁰ Jeffrey Gettleman (2004) From bugs to boxing, a termite's impact on Iraq, New York Times, March 16, 2004. Available at: http: //www.nytimes.com/2004/03/16/sports/othersports/16BOX1.html?pagewantedall (Accessed February 1, 2009).