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The High School
Sports, Spirit, and Citizens, 1903-2024
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Michael A. Messner
Sprache:
Englisch
Veröffentlicht/Copyright:
2025
Über dieses Buch
High school yearbooks provide both a vivid snapshot of student life and a reflection of what the adults in the community valued the most. For instance, athletics are often covered more than academics, and boys’ sports routinely receive more attention than girls’ sports. But how have those values changed over time?
In The High School, acclaimed sociologist Michael A. Messner reads through 120 years of El Gabilan, the yearbook from his own alma mater, Salinas High School in California, where his father taught and coached. Treating the yearbooks as a historical archive, Messner makes surprising discoveries about the school he thought he knew so well. For example, over fifty years before Title IX, the earliest yearbooks gave equal spotlights to boys’ and girls’ athletics, while the cheerleaders were all boys.
Tracing American life and culture from 1903 to 2024, Messner illuminates shifts in social practices at his high school that reflect broader changes in American culture across the twentieth century. The High School spotlights how the meanings and iconography of certain activities have changed radically over the decades, even as the “sports spirit complex”—involving athletes, cheerleaders, band members, and community boosters—has remained a central part of the high school experience. By exploring evolving sports cultures, socioeconomic conditions, racial demographics, and gender norms, Messner offers a fresh perspective on a defining feature of American teenage life.
In The High School, acclaimed sociologist Michael A. Messner reads through 120 years of El Gabilan, the yearbook from his own alma mater, Salinas High School in California, where his father taught and coached. Treating the yearbooks as a historical archive, Messner makes surprising discoveries about the school he thought he knew so well. For example, over fifty years before Title IX, the earliest yearbooks gave equal spotlights to boys’ and girls’ athletics, while the cheerleaders were all boys.
Tracing American life and culture from 1903 to 2024, Messner illuminates shifts in social practices at his high school that reflect broader changes in American culture across the twentieth century. The High School spotlights how the meanings and iconography of certain activities have changed radically over the decades, even as the “sports spirit complex”—involving athletes, cheerleaders, band members, and community boosters—has remained a central part of the high school experience. By exploring evolving sports cultures, socioeconomic conditions, racial demographics, and gender norms, Messner offers a fresh perspective on a defining feature of American teenage life.
Information zu Autoren / Herausgebern
MICHAEL A. MESSNER is a professor emeritus of sociology and gender studies at the University of Southern California. He is the author of such works as Power at Play and Taking the Field. This is his twentieth book.
Rezensionen
"A brilliant and unique addition to the history and sociology of gender studies and sport. It has an important place in every sport sociologist's library, but it also stimulates all of us to look back at our high school years with new eyes."— Patricia Vertinsky, coeditor of The Female Tradition in Physical Education
"Messner weaves a compelling narrative that reveals how sports both passively mirror and actively reinforce broader societal currents, functioning as a vital microcosm of American social change. This book is more than a history of a single school; it serves
as a window into the values, anxieties, and power structures that have shaped American society. . . . Messner's work is not just about sports; it is about us. It challenges readers to reflect on their own experiences, assumptions, prejudices, and the very
fabric of American society itself, ensuring this book will resonate long after the final page is turned."
"The High School raises important questions about sports as drivers of gender relations in American schools."— Monterey Herald
"A timely exploration of how sports have shaped—and gendered—the American high school experience. . . . Messner's decades of scholarship on gendered sports media representation equip him for a longitudinal examination of how national trends are reflected in athletic experiences at Salinas High. This fascinating story of more than a century of girls' athletics optimistically argues that social change is non-linear: setbacks do not negate future progress. . . . The yearbooks serve as student-edited carriers of 'cultural memory' that provide vivid written and visual snapshots of the past."
— Social Forces"A great example of how artifacts of everyday life can become data for sociological analysis. . . . The High School reminds us that change isn’t simple or linear, but complex and shifting. The book itself has the look and feel of an actual high school yearbook, filled with pictures and captions. This encourages the reader to reflect on their own high school experience, through lenses of both nostalgia and the sociological imagination."— Everyday Sociology
"[A] fascinating new book about what we can learn by looking at sports and yearbooks over the course of a century. . . . It’s really remarkable."— The Nation’s Edge of Sports podcast
"The High School takes us on a compelling historical journey, offering a unique blend of sociology, history, and personal memoir. Messner captures not only the evolution of one high school but also the broader cultural shifts in race, gender, class, and sexuality. A brilliant and insightful work that may have many of us digging out our own yearbooks and revisiting our own stories."— C. J. Pascoe, author of Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School
"The High School is a splendid study of more than a century of high school culture, sport, and gender relations at Salinas High School. In this meticulously researched study, Messner combines a sensitive reading of sources with empathy for his historical subjects to produce a lively narrative about one of the most important institutions—the high school—of adolescent life. This compelling story of changing gender and race relations in Salinas offers powerful insights for scholars of sport, historians of youth culture, and general readers (anyone who has ever attended high school!) alike."— Susan K. Cahn, author of Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Women's Sport
"Messner has written a powerful, compelling analysis that effectively shows just how high schools contributed to the changing status of girls and women. The Salinas High School Yearbooks not only reflected women's loss of prestige and place from the 1920s through the postwar years but also showed that high school life played an important role in driving that change. This is a superb study of gender, power, race, and class in Salinas, California."
— Carol Lynn McKibben, author of Salinas: A History of Race and Resilience in an Agricultural City
— Carol Lynn McKibben, author of Salinas: A History of Race and Resilience in an Agricultural City
"An ambitious and expansive sociohistory of U.S. life, interweaving disciplines, methods, and theories to document the mundane and pernicious ways race, class, and gender route our lives through recurring sport rituals. The book unfolds across seven chapters, includes 270 images, and has the look, feel, and heft of a high school yearbook. . . . With unflinching and multidimensional analysis, Messner challenges readers to reconsider how we understand, study, and memorialize the past to make better sense of our present society."— Sociology of Sport Journal
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Paradoxes of Progress Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert |
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High School Yearbooks as Personal and Cultural Memory Erfordert eine Authentifizierung Nicht lizenziert Lizenziert |
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Informationen zur Veröffentlichung
Seiten und Bilder/Illustrationen im Buch
eBook veröffentlicht am:
5. März 2025
eBook ISBN:
9781978839564
Seiten und Bilder/Illustrationen im Buch
eBook ISBN:
9781978839564
Schlagwörter für dieses Buch
sports; gender; children's sports; little league; title IX; Salinas High School; community; belonging; football; cheerleader; coaching; cheerleading; k-12; education; high school; Yearbook; race; class; public high school; gender; race and class formations; basketball; baseball; volleyball; highschool sports
Zielgruppe(n) für dieses Buch
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
