Out of Bounds

The Authors: Jabari Mahiri is Professor of Education in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has been a faculty member since receiving his Ph.D. in English in 1992 from the University of Illinois, Chicago. Dr. Mahiri is the author of Shooting for Excellence: African American and Youth Culture in New Century Schools (1998), Digital Tools in Urban Schools (2010), and the editor of What They Don’t Learn in School: Literacy in the Lives of Urban Youth (2004) and the forthcoming book, Virtual Lives: Nerdfighters, Scarlet Writers, Little Sisters, Future Souls, and Future Schools.Derek Van Rheenen is Adjunct Professor of Education in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has been a faculty member since receiving his Ph.D. in cultural studies at Berkeley in 1997. He coordinates the Cultural Studies of Sport in Education M.A. in the Graduate School of Education. Dr. Van Rheenen’s publications include «The Promise of Soccer in America: the Open Play of Ethnic Subcultures», «Boys Who Play Hopscotch: The Historical Divide of a Gendered Space», «Non-cognitive Predictors of Student Athletes’ Academic Performance» (with Herbert D. Simons), and «Academic Motivation and the Student Athlete» (with Herbert D. Simons and Martin V. Covington).

«Many athletes have written about their sports journeys; many professors have applied academic theories to sports; but never before have the two genres merged into a riveting book. Using the life stories of six student athletes – each representing a different race and/or gender and/or class – and deftly applying various academic theories, but always in clear English, Jabari Mahiri and Derek Van Rheenen extrapolate worlds of meaning from their evidence. In so doing, they ask the crucial questions about race, gender, and class in sports, particularly at the intersection of sports and education, and then provide some remarkable answers. This book is essential reading for everyone interested in American sports and education, and it should become a classic in the field.» (Murray Sperber, Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington; Author of ‘Beer & Circus: How Big-time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education’)