Featured Books

The definitive book on all things cheerleading, including the history of cheerleading, the sexualization and feminization of cheerleading, cheerleading as big business, and the “cheerleading as sport” controversy. Natalie Adams and Pamela Bettis trace cheerleading's history from its inception 135 years ago as a male leadership activity, through the sexual and sassy era epitomized by the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, to its current incarnation as a physically demanding sport. Integrating history, pop culture, and interviews with cheerleaders of all ages, even those in the cheerleading business, Adams and Bettis simultaneously celebrate cheerleading and provide a critical analysis of this perennially popular activity.

Cheerleader!: An American Icon

  • Geographies of Girlhood: Identities In-Between (2005) — Natalie Adams and Pamela Bettis

  • Just Trying to Have School: The Struggle for Desegregation in Mississippi (2018) — Natalie Adams and James Harold Adams

Also by Natalie Adams

  • The Routledge Companion to Advertising and Promotional Culture, 2nd Edition (2023) — Emily West and Matthew P. McAllister

  • Buy Now: How Amazon Branded Convenience and Normalized Monopoly (2022) —Emily West

  • The Routledge Companion to Advertising and Promotional Culture (2013) — Emily West and Matthew P. McAllister

by Emily WEst

  • Suffering Sappho! Lesbian Camp in American Popular Culture (2024) — Barbara Jane Brickman

  • Love Across the Atlantic: US-UK Romance in Popular Culture (2020) — Barabara Jane Brickman, Deborah Jermyn and Theodore Trost

  • Grease: Gender, Nostalgia and Youth Consumption in the Blockbuster Era (2017) — Barbara Jane Brickman

  • New American Teenagers: The Lost Generation of Youth in 1970s Film (2012) — Barbara Jane Brickman

by Barbara Jane Brickman

  • Higher Education Beyond COVID: New Teaching Paradigms and Promise (2024) — Dwaine Plaza and Regan A. R. Gurung

  • Carnival is Woman: Feminism and Performance in the Caribbean Mas (2020) — Dwaine Plaza and Frances Henry

  • Returning to the Source: The Final Stage of the Caribbean Migration Circuit (2006) — Dwaine Plaza and Frances Henry

by Dwaine Plaza

  • Coming soon! Can’t Eat a Medal: The Lives and Labors of Black Women Athletes in the Age of Jim Crow — Amira Rose Davis

  • Go Wilma Go! Wilma Rudolph, from Athlete to Activist (2024) — Amira Rose Davis and Michael G. Long

  • Burn It All Down Podcast — Amira Rose Davis, Shireen Ahmed, Brenda Elsey, Lindsay Gibbs, and Jessica Luther

  • Season 3 host of “American Prodigies: A History of Black Girls in Gymnastics

by Amira Rose Davis

  • The Money Shot: Trash, Class, and the Making of TV Talk Shows — Laura Grindstaff

  • The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Sociology, 2nd Edition (2020) — Laura Grindstaff, Ming-Cheng M. Lo, and John R. Hall

  • The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Sociology, 1st Edition (2010) — Laura Grindstaff, Ming-Cheng M. Lo, and John R. Hall

by Laura Grindstaff

  • Deviance & Social Control: A Sociological Perspective, 3rd Edition — Michelle Inderbitzin, Kristin A. Bates, and Randy R. Gainey

by Michelle Inderbitzin

  • Coming Soon! Deportistas! Mexican Women, Sporting Citizenship, and Belonging in Twentieth Century America — Paulina A. Serrano

by Paulina A. Serrano