Boxing: A Cultural History

Boxing has been a powerful medium for recording and making sense of social, political, and cultural resonances, with boxers embodying and enacting our anxieties about race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Kasia Boddy's encyclopedic investigation explores the history of boxing and its intersection with mass media, shedding new light on the work of diverse figures such as Henry Fielding, Spike Lee, Charlie Chaplin, Philip Roth, James Joyce, Mae West, Bertolt Brecht, and Charles Dickens.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 10 June 2019
Publisher: Reaktion Books

Throughout history, potters, sculptors, painters, poets, novelists, cartoonists, song-writers, photographers, and film-makers have recorded and made sense of boxing, capturing its essence and significance in various forms of art. In her encyclopedic investigation of the shifting social, political, and cultural resonances of this most visceral of sports, Kasia Boddy sheds new light on an elemental struggle for dominance whose weapons are nothing more than fists. From Daniel Mendoza to Mike Tyson, boxers have embodied and enacted our anxieties about race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Looking afresh at everything from neo-classical sculpture to hip-hop lyrics, Boddy explores the way in which the history of boxing has intersected with the history of mass media, shedding new light on the work of diverse figures such as Henry Fielding and Spike Lee, Charlie Chaplin and Philip Roth, James Joyce and Mae West, Bertolt Brecht and Charles Dickens. This all-encompassing study tells us just how and why boxing has mattered so much to so many.

Weight: 918g
Dimension: 151 x 210 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781789140514