Self Indulgence Alert: "Stopped at the Try Line? Rugby, Race, and Nationalism in Post-Apartheid South Africa"

Forgive the self indulgence, but Impumelelo: The Interdisciplinary Electronic Journal of African Sports (based at my PhD alma mater Ohio University, but with no history department connections) has published an article of mine that you can actually access (still a too-rare thing for scholarly articles), "Stopped at the Try Line? Rugby, Race, and Nationalism in Post-Apartheid South Africa."

The article has a long history. It began as a seminar paper back when I was a PhD student. I continued to work on the topic and fleshed it out for a conference on South African sport at Stellenbosch University in 2008. Peter Alegi, a renowned historian of African sport who is part of Michigan State University's fantastic African Studies program, (his book, "Laduma!" on the history of South African soccer is an essential work in the field, and his newest book, African Soccerscapes, is sure to achieve the same status), serves as guest editor of this special issue of Impumelelo.

It's proving to be a pretty big summer for me with regard to my work on South African sport. I have an article coming out soon in the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs on rugby and soccer in post-1994 South Africa. I have a review essay under consideration elsewhere. A few weeks back I gave a talk at the Newberry Library on race and rugby in South Africa (which uses the same title as the Impumelelo article, but which is in fact a much more expansive project). And of course I will be at the World Cup and will be doing a number of writing projects, scholarly and otherwise, from South Africa.

The opening game of the World Cup will already be in the books two weeks from today.

[Cross-posted at the FPA Africa Blog.]