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¶¡Ïã³ÉÈËÉçÇø is pleased to welcome Impact+ Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Dewitt King to the campus community.

During his two-year fellowship, Dr. King will conduct research for his book project Card Subject to Change, where he will utilize the pro wrestling industry to unpack the relationship between labour precarity, deregulation, and meritocracy as a guiding principle that underscores the Western world. Dr. King will be working under the guidance of Dr. Kristi Allain from the Department of Sociology during his tenure.

“Working with Dr. Kristi Allain will reorient the ways in which I think about the sociocultural processes that underline sport,” Dr. King said.

“As an interdisciplinary Black studies scholar, being housed in a Sociology program will enhance my structural analysis as I will be exposed to new theoretical terrain that will strengthen my examination of the relationship between organizational structures, dominant ideological representations, and quotidian practices in sport media industries.”

Dr. King’s research focuses on Black athletes as a political category in the Americas, examining global sport industries as an afterlife of slavery that transforms Black bodies into commodified subjects. It seeks to understand the relationship between mythologies of Black athleticism and the high levels of disposability that Black athletes endure in sports.

“I’m really excited to have Dr. King join the STU community,” Dr. Allain said.

“He will help enhance STU’s scholarly capacity in the field of Black studies and grow the city’s expertise in critical sport studies. We both share an interest in gender, race, aging and physical culture, and I look forward to working closely with Dewitt and finding exciting and productive ways to collaborate.”

Dr. King holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of South Carolina, a Masters from the University of Wisconsin, and a PhD from the University of Minnesota. He comes to St. Thomas from the University of Notre Dame where he was a visiting professor of American Studies. Prior to that, Dr. King held a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Film and Media Studies at the University of California Irvine.

Impact+ Postdoctoral Fellows are funded through the Canada Impact+ Research Training Awards.