Dr. Samantha King, Ph.D (Illinois)
Research summary
My research interests straddle a number of fields and disciplines, including cultural studies, sociology, feminist theory, and critical race studies. I understand health, sport, and the body to be powerful vehicles for the production of social difference and inequality and I use my work to uncover how these vehicles operate and with what effects. The specific issues I have studied include: media representations of HIV/AIDS, the emergence of consumer-oriented breast cancer philanthropy, the racial politics of volunteerism, and the relationship between commercial sport culture and militarization. Although these topics seem far removed from one another, they have each allowed me to explore how the discourses and practices of corporations, the state, and the nonprofit sector serve to mutually reinforce one another in producing notions of healthy and unhealthy citizenship. Building on these long-term interests, my current projects include a theoretical analysis of the place of the state in contemporary commercial sport culture and a study of celebrity and consumer-oriented fundraising for HIV/AIDS in Africa
Graduate student training opportunities
I am interested in supervising graduate students with an orientation towards sociology or cultural studies, health, sport, and the body.
Prospective students are expected to apply to the Ontario Graduate Scholarship programs, SSHRC, CIHR, and other agencies that fund graduate students.
Current funding
Please contact Dr. King for further details
Recent publications
King, S. (2009). Homonormativity and the politics of race: Reading Sheryl Swoopes. Journal of Lesbian Studies, 13, 279-290.
King, S. (2009). Sociocultural sport studies and the scientific paradigm: A response to John Smith. Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise , 2, 101-106.
Pink Ribbons Inc. Breast Cancer Culture and the Politics of Philanthropy. University of Minnesota Press. Expected publication: August 2006.
Methodological contingencies in contextual sport studies. In D. Andrews, D. Mason, & M. Silk (Eds.), Qualitative Methods in Sport Studies (pp.21-38). New York: Sage, 2005.
How to be good: The NFL, corporate philanthropy, and the racialization of generosity. In C. McCarthy, W. Chrichlow, G. Dimitriadis, & N. Dolby (Eds.), Race, Identity, and Representation in Education, Volume 2 (pp. 273-287). New York: Routledge Falmer, 2005.
Marketing generosity: The Avon WorldWide Fund for Women’s Health and the reinvention of global corporate citizenship. In D. Andrews and M. Silk (Eds.), Corporate Nationalisms: Sport, Cultural Identity & Transnational Marketing (pp. 83-108). New York: Berg, 2005.
Sports ‘r us: All-school contracts, trademarks and logos. In S. Slaughter and G. Rhoades (Eds.), Academic Capitalism and the New Economy: Markets, State and Higher Education (pp. 256-278). Pink Ribbons Inc: `Breast cancer activism and the politics of philanthropy. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 17(4), 473-492, 2004.
An all-consuming cause: Breast cancer, corporate philanthropy, and the market for generosity. Social Text, 69, 115-143, 2001.