In this article, I examine the ways sport fans construct and circulate discourses of race and masculinity in cyberspace. I do this through an examination of a set of Internet memes that juxtapose the bodies of National Hockey League players with National Basketball Association players in one single image. I argue these memes celebrate White masculinity, while at the same time constructing African American athletes as individualistic, selfish, and unwilling to sacrifice their bodies for the greater good of the team. More so, I argue that these memes construct a form of racial ideology that is representative of White backlash politics.

In this article, I examine the ways the popular press, and two sport documentaries construct narratives of Ricky Williams’ marijuana use, early retirement, and return to the National Football League. I argue that all of the texts in question, work to produce a dominant reading of Williams, as someone who is difficult to define, and it is because of inability to put Williams’s identity into a box, that his marijuana use, “strange” personality, and early retirement is used to shoe-horn him into tropes of the bad black athlete. Nonetheless, this paper draws on Mark Anthony Neal’s concept of illegible and legible black masculinity to argue that a re-scripting of these narratives can be used to imagine alternative forms of black masculinity the emphasizes empathy, sensitivity, emotional maturity, and a rejection of domination and material wealth. This analysis is situated within the changing landscape of marijuana legislation and the racial inequity in arrest rates for marijuana.

Thesis Supervisor: Professor Susan BirrellThis is a project that examines dominant conceptions about productive and unproductive bodies. This dissertation deconstructs how the typical unproductive marijuana using body is represented in film and anti-drug advertisements. It then situates these representations within historical discourse of marijuana prohibition. Finally, this project examines how the athletic body, a body that usually connotes health, is understood when it uses a substance that is supposed to make the corporeal unproductive.In addition this project also asks how does race and masculinity shape these understanding? By analyzing the narratives of five athletes: Michael Phelps, Tim Lincecum, Ricky Williams, Josh Howard, and Joakim Noah, this project hopes to deconstruct dominant understandings of the marijuana using body. This project seeks to generate new knowledge about the marijuana using body to help sick people obtain a helpful medicine and stop the imprisonment of non-violent drug offenders, who are disproportionately the poor and minorities. Abstract Approved: ____________________________________ Thesis Supervisor