Tracie Canada
We are thrilled to be working with author and Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology Tracie Canada on her latest book, “Tackling the Everyday: Race and Nation in Big-Time College Football” by the University of California Press.
Tracie Canada is the Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology and is affiliated with the Sports & Race Project at Duke University. She is also the founder and director of the HEARTS (Health, Ethnography, and Race through Sports) Lab. As a Black feminist anthropologist and ethnographer, Dr. Canada’s work uses sport, specifically American football, to theorize race, kinship, care, and gender. In her first ethnographic book, Tackling the Everyday: Race and Nation in Big-Time College Football (University of California Press, 2025), she analyzes the performing athletic body to reveal how processes of anti-Blackness, injury, violence, and care impact the everyday lived experiences of Black college football players. In addition to her academic publications, her work has been featured in public venues and outlets such as The Museum of Modern Art, TIME, The Guardian, and Scientific American.
A Black feminist take on exploitation and care in America’s favorite game.
Big-time college football promises prestige, drama, media attention, and money. Yet most athletes in this unpaid, amateur system encounter a different reality, facing dangerous injuries, few pro-career opportunities, a free but devalued college education, and future financial instability. In one of the first ethnographies about Black college football players, anthropologist Tracie Canada reveals the ways young athletes strategically resist the exploitative systems that structure their everyday lives.
Tackling the Everyday shows how college football particularly harms the young Black men who are overrepresented on gridirons across the country. Although coaches and universities constantly invoke the misleading “football family” narrative, this book describes how a brotherhood among Black players operates alongside their caring mothers, who support them on and off the field. With a Black feminist approach—one that highlights often-overlooked voices—Canada exposes how race, gender, kinship, and care shape the lives of the young athletes who shoulder America’s favorite game.
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