Brandon Wallace

Biography

Dr. Brandon T. Wallace earned his Ph.D. (’24) and M.A. (’19) in Kinesiology – Physical Cultural Studies from the University of Maryland, as well as his B.A. (’17) in Sports Communication and Sociology from Bradley University.

Broadly, Dr. Wallace’s research critically examines sport as a form of popular culture through which power relations are both constituted and resisted. With theoretical and methodological diversity, his interdisciplinary research agenda aims to articulate the linkages between sport, race, media, activism, and social movements.

Dr. Wallace’s current research builds on his dissertation work, which was titled Sport, Race, and Grassroots Activism: A Contextual Analysis of Colin Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Camp as a Sporting Social Movement Organization. This work collaborates with Know Your Rights Camp (KYRC), founded by athlete-activist Colin Kaepernick. Dr. Wallace uses KYRC as a case study to analyze the emergence of Sporting Social Movement Organizations (SMOs), referring to organizations that mobilize a connection to sport/athletes to pursue social, political, or cultural change in a coordinated, strategic, and sustained manner. Dr. Wallace’s research with KYRC includes micro-level analyses of the models, strategies, challenges, and institutional logics of Sporting SMOs, as well as how (digital) critical pedagogy through sport is formulated, mobilized, and received by Black and Brown communities. At the macro level, Dr. Wallace’s research examines what KYRC reveals about transgressive potentials of sport, Black (commercial) politics, and the fractures of neoliberalism within contemporary America.

Dr. Wallace’s previous research analyzed the racial politics that underpin, and are advanced by, depictions of Black bodies, spaces, and celebrities within sports media. This was explored through a range of media texts: commercial depictions of “streetball” (in Communication & Sport); LeBron James’ HBO television series The Shop (in Media, Culture, and Society); contemporary post-Black Lives Matter sport advertising (in Sport, Advertising and Global Promotional Culture; Routledge); and athletic apparel industry marketing and consumption (in International Journal of the History of Sport; Journal of Sport and Social Issues; Social Sciences; and forthcoming in Annals of Leisure Research). Dr. Wallace has begun numerous research projects exploring how – and with what effects – sport and sports media has adapted to the attention economy. Overall, Dr. Wallace’s research, teaching, and community work aims to illuminate for scholars, athletes, fans, and media professionals how cultural, political, and economic tensions are always being ‘fought’ in the terrain of sport.

Dr. Wallace currently teaches MSCH-C218 Sports, Media, and Society; and MSCH-B360 Sporting Hollywood.

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