Sports in China

From the handout I emailed....

SPORTS AND SPORTS HISTORY

Several books about China’s Olympic experience were published in the lead up to the 2008 Olympics.  See, for example, Guoqi Xu, Olympic Dreams: China and Sports, 1895-2008, Harvard University Press, 2008.

An excellent history of Shaolin and its arts:

Shahar, Meir. The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts. Hawai`i, 2007.

This book on baseball in Taiwan raises many of the themes about imperialism and sports and masculinity that Pat McDevitt introduced in regard to India and cricket:

Morris, Andrew D. Colonial Project, National Game: A History of Baseball in Taiwan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. You can read my somewhat critical review of this book (from the perspective of a baseball fan -- Go Tigers!) on the Modern Chinese Literature and Culture website, posted March 2011. http://mclc.osu.edu/rc/pubs/reviews/stapleton.htm

Susan Brownell is an anthropologist who competed in track for Peking University when she studied there.  She has written a lot about sports culture in contemporary China, including an essay in the book she edited with Jeff Wasserstrom:
Brownell, Susan and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, ed. Chinese Femininities/Chinese Masculinities: A Reader. University of California Press, 2002.