"New Books in Sports" Interview with Stephen Allen

H-Sport "New Books in Sports" Interview with Stephen Allen

Discussion published by Keith Rathbone on Wednesday, July 21, 2021 Hello colleagues, I am writing to let you know about our latest New Books in Sports interview with Stephen Allen, Associate Professor of History at California State University, Bakersfield, and the author of A History of Boxing in Mexico: Masculinity, Modernity and Nationalism (University of New Mexico Press, 2017). In our conversation, we discussed the origins of boxing in Mexico, the local and transnational logics of its development, and the racial dynamics underpinning Mexican nationalism. Please find the URL here: https://newbooksnetwork.com/a-history-of-boxing-in-mexico In A History of Boxing in Mexico, Allen investigates the rise of Mexican boxing through the lives of five of its greatest champions: Rodolfo Casanova, Raul “Raton” Macias, Vincente Saldivar, Rubén Olivares, and José Nápoles. Through these five case studies, Allen raises questions about the nature of Mexican masculinity, pushing past stereotypes of machismo to address changes in both its performative and affective qualities over time. Allen’s work deftly engages with the historiography of boxing, anthropology, and ethnography in order to recapture the local, familial, and sporting environment that these five boxers inhabited. He shows how Mexican elites, including politicians in the governing PRI Party, sought to use boxing to modernize working class men. Each of these five examples, however, used the state’s investment in the sport in their own ways, becoming at times successful and at times failed avatars of masculinity. In addressing what he calls the first two golden ages of Mexican boxing, Allen moves from the hyper-local, focusing on Tepito, a neighborhood in Mexico City, to the national, and finally to the transnational, drawing in the Chicano community in Los Angeles. He demonstrates the important role that new media, notably film and television, played as boxers reshaped their image for new times and audiences. His athletes performed their masculinity in the context of changing international conversations about race and gender, particularly during the 68 Olympics, the Civil Rights Movement and the Sexual Revolution, but also in the context of the success and failure of the Mexican economy from the 1940s until the 1970s. Allen’s work provides a model for a connected sports history; readers interested in

Citation: Keith Rathbone. "New Books in Sports" Interview with Stephen Allen. H-Sport. 07-21-2021. https://networks.h-net.org/node/2622/discussions/7948916/new-books-sports-interview-stephen-allen Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Sport transnational Latin American identities, masculinity and boxing will be particularly interested in reading it. The "New Books in Sports" network features discussions with sports scholars about their most recent books. It is a part of the "New Books Network," a consortium of podcasts exploring recent publications across a wide range of fields. The podcasts can also be accessed via iTunes where a free subscription option is available. Please contact me off-list if you have any recent book suggestions. Best, Keith Rathbone Senior Lecturer, Macquarie University [email protected] Twitter: @keithrathbone