UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Sporting
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Sporting Bodies, Displaying History: Black Embodiment and Performance in Contemporary Sports Films A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Film and Television by Samantha Noelle Sheppard 2014 © Copyright by Samantha Noelle Sheppard 2014 ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Sporting Bodies, Displaying History: Black Embodiment and Performance in Contemporary Sports Films by Samantha Noelle Sheppard Doctor of Philosophy in Film and Television University of California, Los Angeles, 2014 Professor Kathleen McHugh, Co-Chair Professor Allyson Nadia Field, Co-Chair In this dissertation I analyze Black embodiment and performance in contemporary sports films, particularly through their documentary impulse, the gestures and markers through which these films establish their reference to real sporting and non-sporting bodies and histories. I argue that through this impulse, sports films make claims to an historical real, and they can therefore be explored for how they represent the Black sporting body. Though my project focuses primarily on fiction films, I begin by analyzing this impulse in a sports documentary for how it represents the performance and embodiment of the Black sporting body as an historical contestant. I then trace these strategies as they appear in and shape sports in fiction films, ii specifically through narratives of triumph and defeat, dissent, and gendered visibility. Throughout, I focus on and read the Black sporting body as a an individuated multiplicity which, through performance and embodiment, represents, references, and relates to Black sporting and non-sporting embodied histories and experiences. Sports films offer a privileged viewpoint on Black embodiment because of their high concentration of Black actors, one that mirrors representation in contemporary athletics.
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