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Podcast: New Books in Latino Studies
Episode: Ben Chappell, "Mexican American Fastpitch: Vernacular Sport and Cultural Citizenship in Mid-America" (Stanford UP, 2021)
Description: Today we are joined by Ben Chappell, Professor of American Studies at the University of Kansas, and author of Mexican American Fastpitch: Identity at Play in Vernacular Sport (Stanford University Press, 2021). In our conversation, we discussed the origins of Mexican American Fastpitch, his interlocutors debate over whether to open Mexican American softball tournaments to Anglo players, and how fastpitch helped Mexican Americans enact a specific and local form of cultural citizenship in the Midwest and Texas.In Mexican American Fastpitch, Chappell uses ethnographic methods to study Mexican American fastpitch in local communities stretching across the Midwest and Texa...