Rings of Dissent: Boxing and Performances of Rebellion

by Rudy Mondragón (Editor), Gaye Theresa Johnson (Editor), David J. Leonard (Editor)

Overview

Professional boxers practice their trade within an ostensibly apolitical arena. In reality, however, the fighters work inside a capitalistic and neoliberal sports culture that they both challenge and uphold. This collection delves into professional boxing’s capacity for brilliance, contradiction, resistance, and complicity. Scholars, activists, and artists explore the boxing ring as a site for understanding original and diverse ideas about the performance of race, citizenship, gender, power, and dissent. Essays and interviews draw attention to the cultural politics and performances of marginalized boxers while revealing the structures of power and practices of agency at work around Black, Brown, and queer bodies. As the contributors establish boxing’s central place in communities of color, they open exciting new avenues for studying race, immigration, gender, and capital. Multifaceted and innovative, Rings of Dissent uncovers fascinating corners of the boxing world as it illuminates what the sport tells us about America. Contributors: José M. Alamillo, Roberto José Andrade Franco, Gaye Theresa Johnson, Javon Johnson, Priscilla Leiva, David J. Leonard, Kyle T. Mays, Rudy Mondragón, Louis Moore, Mark Anthony Neal, Lucia Trimbur, and Dave Zirin

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252046865
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	12/09/2025
Series:	Sport and Society
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Rudy Mondragón is an assistant professor of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at Loyola Marymount University. He is currently working on a book manuscript that examines the political economy of boxing and how professional boxers perform dignity and resistance. Gaye Theresa Johnson is an associate professor of African American Studies and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of Spaces of Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity: Music, Race, and Spatial Entitlement in Los Angeles. David J. Leonard is a professor of ethnic studies and chair of the Department of Multicultural and Gender Studies at Chico State University. His books include Playing While White: Privilege and Power on and off the Field.

Editorial Reviews

Time and again, this sport has given us the richest possible window into this country, and yet it has seemed in recent years that the window has closed. But we still need boxing to not only understand our past but to also comprehend the present. [Rings of Dissent] has the immediacy of the great boxing writing of the past by figures such James Baldwin, Gay Talese, and Joyce Carol Oates, while keeping its feet planted in the present.”
—From the Foreword by Dave Zirin, author of The Kaepernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World

From the Publisher