Living Out of Bounds: The MaleAthlete’s

Everyday LifeSteven J. Overman. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,

2009.

Where does the private person end and theprofessional athlete begin? In his most recent book,Steven J. Overman reviews an exhaustive list of sports

memoirs to answer this question and to understand thesports celebrity in both a modern and historical

context. From these sources, he constructs a cohesiveand straightforward distillation of the commonalities

of professional athletes. With a historical perspective atthe forefront, this book presents the business and

experience of professional sports and becomes atimeless experience for the reader.

This compressed analysis of male sports auto/

biographies offers two major themes. First, Overmanacknowledges throughout the text that some experi-

ences are shared by professional athletes as a group,regardless of generation or sport. These include the

physical and psychological demands of athleticism, arespect for the unwavering authority of the coach, the

complications of homosocial bonding and homopho-bia, the uncertainty of career longevity, the demanding

schedule of life on the road, the social pressure fromfans and media, and the shared vices of gambling anddrug use. Although Overman does find common

themes, he is careful not to generalize—while heidentifies typical career struggles, he makes no

assumptions that all male athletes are alike. Second,he recognizes the limitations of a media-centered view

of the professional athlete—he believes that ‘‘whattranspires when the author hangs up his uniform can

prove much more revealing’’ than simply a series ofnarrations of the events on the field (xxvii). With thisin mind, he explores the shared experiences of being a

professional athlete while still highlighting individualmen’s experiences as players.

Although Living Out of Bounds is a compilation ofexisting sports memoirs, Overman adds to the field by

focusing on multiple sports, athletes, and generationalexperiences. With this approach, he introduces readers

to a variety of athletes that may not be acknowledgedby a single-focused sports fan; on several occasions,

Roberto Clemente (baseball), Bill Bradley (basketball),Lance Armstrong (cycling), Arthur Ashe (tennis) and

Ted Turner (yachting) are connected to each other in a

short matter of pages. This cohesiveness strengthensOverman’s presentation by ensuring that the spirit of

sport itself (regardless of the particular game involved)is presented to viewers in a unified and compelling

way.The subtitle of the book clarifies its intent: this is a

book about male athletes. With this focus, however,Overman uses the context of sport to explore different

types of male-centered relationships, particularlybetween athlete and (authoritative) coach; teammateand teammate (as comrades and competitors); the

celebrity athlete and (female) groupie; and the hus-band-athlete and supportive/absent wife. Even further,

he focuses a significant part of one chapter on theconflict between homosocial relationships and homo-

phobia in professional sports. Although this single-gender focus somewhat limits the breadth implied by

his research, Overman’s focus on masculinity in thisbook is imperative to understanding the context andhistory of professional sports.

Overall, this book is a comprehensive and well-researched collection of the experiences of the personal

and professional lives of career male athletes. Althoughthe collection of chapters together offers a striking

portrait of the sporting life, the parameters of eachchapter are well-defined. Instructors wanting to

incorporate conversations about professional athleti-cism into their classrooms could easily do so with

individual chapters on sports and family, celebritystatus, travel experiences, masculinity and homopho-bia, historical racial progress, body modification, and

career uncertainty.

—Mary Jane Philpy

Independent Scholar

Teaching the Graphic NovelStephen E. Tabachnick, Editor. New York: MLA Press, 2009.

In the past decades, the graphic novel has pushed itsway into conferences, bibliographies, and syllabi long

skeptical of its merits. Stephen E. Tabachnick cele-brates this infiltration with an anthology of thirty-six

essays that should help to cement the graphic novel’sfuture in the classroom. It makes the argument many

108 The Journal of American Culture � Volume 34, Number 1 � March 2011

of us see as obvious: that graphic novels are not only

legitimate objects for study, but may also be morethought-provoking, useful, and fun than what you are

currently teaching in your class.Many of these authors emphasize how nice it is

that ‘‘students usually do not have to be urged to read

them. Students enjoy them not only because of theirlargely—although by no means exclusively—contem-

porary content but also because graphic novels fitstudents’ sensibilities at a deep cognitive level’’ (4).While a skeptic might read ‘‘students usually do not

have to be urged to read them’’ as proof of the graphicnovel’s lightweight status, this anthology repeatedly

demonstrates this is not the case. Graphic novels notonly make diverse disciplines more accessible, but in

their own way challenge students to reexamine howthey interpret both texts and subject matter. Many of

the projects these authors describe, like Anne Thalhei-mer’s use of Roberta Gregory’s A Bitch is Born, JohnNichols’ comparisons of violence in comics and their

film adaptations, and Frank Cioffi’s look at graphicdepictions in medical narratives, disrupt student assump-

tions. These essays engage disciplines as wide ranging asphilosophy, history, women’s studies, sociology, film

studies, science, and technology. Tabachnick makes astrong argument for graphic novels’ value and utility in a

wide range of classrooms. This interdisciplinary poten-tial is repeatedly illustrated, often echoing Alison

Mandaville and J. P. Avila’s explanation that ‘‘We writethis article less as a road map for how to integrate designand literature in your classroom than as encouragement

to seek out your colleagues across disciplinary lines towork together’’ (245).

Some of the best articles do not just endorse

graphic novels and outline classroom experiences.They also give in depth access to the authors’

pedagogical techniques. For example, James BuckyCarter’s piece, ‘‘Teaching Watchmen in the Wake of9/11,’’ thoroughly explains assignments, student re-

sponses, and assessment. Carter not only reveals thepossibilities available when teaching a text like Watch-

men, but also leaves readers wanting to employ hismethods. In the same essay, Carter expands his

pedagogy beyond the class in question, acknowledgingthat the connection between Watchmen and 9/11 might

itself change over time; however his essay provides thegroundwork for teachers to ‘‘expand the pedagogicalrange of a graphic novel that remains very close to us

even as its publication date recedes in time’’(107). It is

this potential the essays in this anthology continuallydemonstrate.

In his first section on Theoretical and AestheticIssues, Tabachnick includes a primer for helping students

and teachers who might be engaging graphic novels forthe first time. While five essays may not be as

comprehensive and entertaining as McCloud’s Under-

standing Comics (which many essays in this book

explicitly acknowledge), they add a clear and importantintroduction to the genre. Similarly, Joseph Witek’s‘‘Seven Ways I Don’t Teach Comics’’ walks teachers

through the possible limits of their own ambition,helping to narrow potentially unwieldy reading lists.

Perhaps the only resource the book omits is anannotated list of graphic novels one might consider for

class. Of course there is a standard scholarly biblio-graphy, and there are many texts discussed throughout

the book. Still, it would have been nice to have them allin one place, so potential teachers and fans of the graphicnovel could have jumped right into the genre.

Tabachnick has put together a wide-ranginganthology helpful to both newcomers and comic book

geeks looking for fresh ways to spin their classes. Thefocus here is without question pedagogical, and these

essays pose many questions for students and teachersalike, questions that should lead to in depth discussions

and engagement with these texts. It’s a shame onemight still need books like these to legitimize graphic

novels within the classroom, but until that suspicion islaid to rest, we can thank Tabachnick and his authorsfor their effort in that direction.

—Gavin Pate

Virginia Wesleyan College

The Foreign Film Renaissance on

American Screens,1946 1̂973Tino Balio. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010.

Anyone who belonged to Stanley Kauffmann’s

‘‘Film Generation’’ will find little novelty in this book,but also little to quibble with. There was a ‘‘Renais-

sance’’ of foreign films during the post-war periodcovered, and many of us were obsessed with the

Neorealism of Rossellini, Zavattini, and DeSica, theNew Wave offerings of Godard, Truffaut, Resnais, and

109Book Reviews