This book explores seriousness in practice in the unique sports context of contemporary women's flat track roller derby. The author presents a stimulating argument for a sociology of seriousness as a productive contribution to understandings of gender, organization and the mid-ranges of agency between dichotomies of voluntarism and determinism.

Do you want to get involved with roller derby as a player, official, or referee? Have you recently begun playing junior roller derby? Maybe all you want to do is learn more about the sport that your loved ones and friends enjoy. This book explains the fundamentals of roller derby, which are depicted with roller derby animals, make it simple to understand the sport, how it is played, the regulations, the penalties, and even some of the basic strategies. Perfect for new players, junior roller derby players and their parents and guardians to get to grips with the sport, this book is made to explain all basics of the sport to help everyone who wants to understand what is going on track in a fun and playful way, accessible to all.

Feminist filmmakers are hitting the headlines. The last decade has witnessed: the first Best Director Academy Award won by a woman; female filmmakers reviving, or starting, careers via analogue and digital television; women filmmakers emerging from Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Pakistan, South Korea, Paraguay, Peru, Burkina Faso, Kenya and The Cree Nation; a bold emergent trans cinema; feminist porn screened at public festivals; Sweden's A-Markt for films that pass the Bechdel Test; and Pussy Riot's online videos sending shockwaves around the world. A new generation of feminist filmmakers, curators and critics is not only influencing contemporary debates on gender and sexuality, but starting to change cinema itself, calling for a film world that is intersectional, sustainable, family-friendly and far-reaching. Political Animals argues that, forty years since Laura Mulvey's seminal essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' identified the urgent need for a feminist counter-cinema, this promise seems to be on the point of fulfilment. Forty years of a transnational, trans-generational cinema has given rise to conversations between the work of now well-established filmmakers such as Abigail Child, Sally Potter and Agnes Varda, twenty-first century auteurs including Kelly Reichardt and Lucretia Martel, and emerging directors such as Sandrine Bonnaire, Shonali Bose, Zeina Daccache, and Hana Makhmalbaf. A new and diverse generation of British independent filmmakers such as Franny Armstrong, Andrea Arnold, Amma Asante, Clio Barnard, Tina Gharavi, Sally El Hoseini, Carol Morley, Samantha Morton, Penny Woolcock, and Campbell X join a worldwide dialogue between filmmakers and viewers hungry for a new and informed point of view. Lovely, vigorous and brave, the new feminist cinema is a political animal that refuses to be domesticated by the persistence of everyday sexism, striking out boldly to claim the public sphere as its own.

September 4, 2000, was Houston's hottest day on record, as well as Beyoncé's nineteenth birthday. Sam Houston was elected president on September 5, 1836. The city was awarded a National League baseball franchise on October 17, 1960, and on November 1, 2017, the Astros won their first World Series. On December 13, 1882, the Capitol Hotel became Houston's first public building to get electricity. Tragedy struck on April 16, 1947, when a ship carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer exploded alongside a Texas City dock. James Glassman captures every single day of the year in the prism of Houston history, from the Texas Revolution to the moon landing.

From television, film, and music to sports, comics, and everyday life, this book provides a comprehensive view of working-class culture in America. The terms "blue collar" and "working class" remain incredibly vague in the United States, especially in pop culture, where they are used to express and connote different things at different times. Interestingly, most Americans are, in reality, members of the working class, even if they do not necessarily think of themselves that way. Perhaps the popularity of many cultural phenomena focused on the working class can be explained in this way: we are endlessly fascinated by ourselves. Blue-Collar Pop Culture: From NASCAR to Jersey Shore provides a sophisticated, accessible, and entertaining examination of the intersection between American popular culture and working-class life in America. Covering topics as diverse as the attacks of September 11th, union loyalties, religion, trailer parks, professional wrestling, and Elvis Presley, the essays in this two-volume work will appeal to general readers and be valuable to scholars and students studying American popular culture.

Illustrated with photographs by Walter Iooss Jr.: Iconic sportswriter and commentator Frank Deford’s first book brings to life one of America’s most thrilling—and misunderstood—sports entertainments, the Roller Derby, from its birth during the Great Depression to it second ascendancy in the late 1960s In Five Strides on the Banked Track, distinguished sports journalist Frank Deford opens a fascinating window on this exhilarating entertainment that operates according to its own set of unique rules—both on and off the track. The Derby began as an idea on a tablecloth in 1935 by Leo Seltzer. From its Great Depression roots—when young skaters would run away to join the Roller Derby in the same way one might run away to join the circus—through its prewar heyday, postwar decline, and ultimate rise to superstardom in the 1960s, Deford sweeps us along on an unforgettable journey. He brings together the players, the fans, the promoters, and the celebrities. He shares the exploits of Bay Bomber legend Charlie O’Connell, superstar Joanie Weston, and beloved villain Ann Calvello, with her dyed blue hair, who would ultimately go on to compete in Roller Derby in seven separate decades. Deford vividly captures the excitement of a sport Variety called “cathartic, dramatic, fast-paced, and classic as a John Wayne movie.” From the idolatry of the fans to the loneliness of the open road to the hard-charging frenzy of the arena, this is a rare glimpse into a uniquely American spectator sport that continues to reinvent and resurrect itself today. This definitive new edition includes a foreword by Jerry Seltzer and an introduction by Frank Deford.