"Samantha N. Sheppard addresses the spectacle of blackness in sports as a sustained effort to challenge our amnesiac public discourse by creating a cinematic archive of black movement. . . .  Sporting Blackness offers a version of endurance — a capacity for sustaining movement together — that can help us remember, or even affect, how it all plays out."

Los Angeles Review of Books

"Sheppard’s exploration of documentary sports films connects to how audiences view and understand contemporary Black athletes’ public articulations of dissent. Highlighting the real and perceived representations of Blackness expressed through film allows a recognition of the fundamental response to racial bias and antagonism that pervade sports; it also foregrounds the ways these portrayals articulate resistance to racial injustices."

Public Books

"Sporting Blackness represents a thoughtful, vibrant and absorbing contribution to our understanding of race, sport and media. . . .  As we look to make sense of the current racialized and racist world we live in, and facilitate our students to do the same, Sheppard’s outstanding book will no doubt prove to be an instructive and indispensable resource."

Ethnic and Racial Studies

"Sporting Blackness, with its incisive close readings and its exciting weave of film-phenomenology, critical race theory and more, is an exemplary work of film studies that must surely influence much work to come." 

Visual Studies

"In her fusion of theories of race and blackness with her concept of critical muscle memory, Sheppard offers a new analytical paradigm applicable beyond the genre at the center of her study. . . . Sporting Blackness is packed with joy, resistance, and hope—much-needed attributes in this time."

Film Quarterly