Biography

As a historian interested in the socio-cultural study of sport and physical activity, I have two primary lines of research. The first of these includes examinations – primarily historical – of global sporting events as sites of resistance and protest. The second uses the tools of people’s history/history from below to broaden our understanding of the lived experience of sport. In addition, both my research and service contributions reflect an interest in sport and the visual, including film and graphic representations.

Current Research Funding

“A People’s History of Sport in Canada,” Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant, + Sport Canada Sport Participation Research Initiative (role: PI), 2022-27

“‘Every American overseas is supposed to teach baseball:’ The Peace Corps, sport, and international development in the Cold War, 1961-69,” UM/SSHRC Explore Grants Program (role: PI), 2023-24

Research areas

  • Canadian sport history
  • People’s history/history from below
  • Sport, social justice, and sites of resistance and protest
  • Sport, social inequality, and international development
  • Sport, film, and society

Education

  • PhD, University of Toronto, Graduate Program in Exercise Sciences (2008)
  • A., University of Toronto, Department of History (2000)
  • B.A., Queen’s University (1991)
  • A., Queen’s University (1989)

Publications

Monographs

Field, Russell. Three Worlds Collide: Sport, politics and the Cold War at the Games of the New Emerging Forces. (manuscript in preparation).

Field, Russell. A Night at the Gardens: Class, gender, and respectability in 1930s Toronto. (University of Toronto Press, 2023).

Darnell, Simon, Russell Field, and Bruce Kidd. The History and Politics of Sport-for-Development: Activists, Ideologues and Reformers. (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).


Edited Collections

Field, Russell, (Ed.). Winters of Discontent: The Winter Olympics and half a century of protest and resistance in/through sport (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, scheduled for 2024).

Forsyth, Janice, Christine O’Bonsawin, Russell Field, and Murray Phillips. (Eds.) Decolonizing Sport (Winnipeg: Fernwood, 2023, in press).

Field, Russell, (Ed.). Playing for Change: The Continuing Struggle for Sport and Recreation. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015).

Field, Russell and Bruce Kidd, (Eds.). 40 Years of Sport and Social Change, 1968-2008: “To Remember is to Resist.” (New York and London: Routledge, 2011).

 

Special Issues

Phillips, Murray, Russell Field, Christine O’Bonsawin, and Janice Forsyth, (Eds.). “Indigenous Resurgence, Regeneration, and Decolonization through Sport History,” Journal of Sport History, 46 (2), 2019.

MacLean, Malcolm, and Russell Field. (Eds.) “Sport beyond the nation state,” National Identities, 16 (4), 2014.

Popovic, Megan, and Russell Field. (Eds.) “Autobiography and Autoethnography in Sport History,” Sport History Review, 44 (1), 2013.

Kidd, Bruce and Russell Field, (Eds.). “‘To Remember is to Resist:’ 40 Years of Sport and Social Change, 1968-2008.” Sport in Society, 13 (1), 2010.

 

Journal Articles

Poplawski, Brent and Russell Field, “The Onset and Impact of Early Sport Specialization among Hockey Players from Winnipeg,” Journal of Emerging Sport Studies, 2023, in press.

Ross, MacIntosh et al. “A Call to Boycott the 2022 Beijing Olympic Games and Establish Minimum Human Rights Standards for Olympic Hosts” [Critical Commentary]. Journal of Emerging Sport Studies, 2021, https://journals.library.brocku.ca/index.php/jess/article/view/3589/2727

Phillips, Murray, Russell Field, Christine O’Bonsawin, and Janice Forsyth, (Eds.). “Indigenous Resurgence, Regeneration, and Decolonization through Sport History,” Journal of Sport History, 46(2), 2019, pp. 143-156.

Field, Russell. “Film Festival Programming and the Cultural Programming of Sport,” INCITE, no. 7-8: Sports, 2017, http://www.incite-online.net/issueseven.html.

Field, Russell, and Bruce Kidd. “Canada and the Pan American Games,” International Journal of the History of Sport, 33 (1-2), 2016, pp. 217-238.

Field, Russell. “Remembering the Remembering,” Sport History Review, 46 (1), 2015, pp. 184-6.

Field, Russell. “Chasing My Grandfather’s Shadow: The Transformation of Geza Feldman and the Role of Physical Activity in the Life of George Field” [selected for and reprinted in a special Best of Sport History Review issue], Sport History Review, 46 (1), 2015, pp. 187-210.

Field, Russell, “Toques and turbans, sticks and show tunes: Incorporating the “other” within Canadian hockey films.” Amodern, No. 3: Sport and Visual Culture, 2014, http://amodern.net/article/toques-and-turbans/.

Field, Russell, “For Kick and Country: The 2010 VIVA World Cup and sport as a site for expressions of alternate ‘national’ identities.” National Identities, 16 (4), 2014, pp. 377-93.

MacLean, Malcolm, and Russell Field. “Performing nations, disrupting states: Sporting identities in nations without states,” National Identities, 16 (4), 2014, pp. 283-90.

Field, Russell, “The Public Sportscaster: Docudrama, national memory, sport history.” Journal of Sport History, 41 (2), 2014, pp. 241-50.

Field, Russell. “Re-entering the Sporting World: China's Sponsorship of the 1963 Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO).” The International Journal of the History of Sport, 31 (15), 2014, pp. 1852-67.

Field, Russell, “Representing ‘The Rocket:’ The Filmic Use of Maurice Richard in Canadian history.” Journal of Sport History, 41 (1), 2014, pp. 15-28.

Field, Russell, “The Struggle for Canadian Sport [The Test of Time].” Journal of Sport History, 41 (1), 2014, pp. 129-40.

Field, Russell. “Chasing My Grandfather’s Shadow: The Transformation of Geza Feldman and the Role of Physical Activity in the Life of George Field.” Sport History Review, 44 (1), 2013, pp. 53-76.

Field, Russell, “‘How we think about hockey, and ourselves’: Television, the 1972 Summit Series, and the construction of a pan-Canadian identity.” Canadian Issues/Thèmes canadiens, Winter 2012, pp. 40-45.

Field, Russell. “‘To remember is to resist’: An introduction.” Sport in Society, 13 (1), January 2010, pp. 6-11.

Field, Russell. “Constructing the Preferred Spectator: Arena Design and Operation and the Consumption of Hockey in 1930s Toronto.” The International Journal of the History of Sport, 25 (6), May 2008, pp. 649-677.

Field, Russell. “Manufacturing memories and directing dreams: Commemoration, community, and the closing of Maple Leaf Gardens.” International Journal of Canadian Studies, no. 35, 2007, pp. 61-93.

Field, Russell. “The Ties That Bind: A 2003 Case Study of Toronto’s Sport Elite and the Operation of Commercial Sport.” International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 41 (1), 2006, pp. 29-58.

Field, Russell. “Passive Participation: The Selling of Spectacle and the Construction of Maple Leaf Gardens, 1931.” Sport History Review, 33(1), May 2002, pp. 35-50.