Brown Bag Lecture: Amira Rose Davis, “Sights Unseen: Black Women Athletes and the (in)Visibility of Political Engagement”

Amira Rose Davis will present “Sights Unseen: Black Women Athletes and the (in)Visibility of Political Engagement,” a brief history of black women’s athletic activism that focuses on how black women athletes have been hypervisible yet oft-ignored symbols of various political struggles on and off the playing field. An assistant professor of history and women’s gender, and sexuality studies at Penn State University, Davis received her doctorate in history from Johns Hopkins University. She specializes in twentieth-century American history with an emphasis on race, gender, sports, and politics, and her research traces the long history of black women’s athletic labor and symbolic representation in the United States. She is currently working on her forthcoming book manuscript, “‘Can’t Eat a Medal’: The Lives and Labors of Black Women Athletes in the Age of Jim Crow.” Davis is also the cohost of the feminist sports podcast, Burn It All Down.