Professional boxers practice their trade within an ostensibly apolitical arena. In reality, however, the fighters work inside a capitalistic and neoliberal sports culture that they both challenge and uphold. This collection delves into professional boxing’s capacity for brilliance, contradiction, resistance, and complicity. Scholars, activists, and artists explore the boxing ring as a site for understanding original and diverse ideas about the performance of race, citizenship, gender, power, and dissent. Essays and interviews draw attention to the cultural politics and performances of marginalized boxers while revealing the structures of power and practices of agency at work around Black, Brown, and queer bodies. As the contributors establish boxing’s central place in communities of color, they open exciting new avenues for studying race, immigration, gender, and capital. Multifaceted and innovative, Rings of Dissent uncovers fascinating corners of the boxing world as it illuminates what the sport tells us about America. Contributors: José M. Alamillo, Roberto José Andrade Franco, Gaye Theresa Johnson, Javon Johnson, Priscilla Leiva, David J. Leonard, Kyle T. Mays, Rudy Mondragón, Louis Moore, Mark Anthony Neal, Lucia Trimbur, and Dave Zirin

Rudy Mondragón is an assistant professor of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at Loyola Marymount University. He is currently working on a book manuscript that examines the political economy of boxing and how professional boxers perform dignity and resistance. Gaye Theresa Johnson is an associate professor of African American Studies and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of Spaces of Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity: Music, Race, and Spatial Entitlement in Los Angeles. David J. Leonard is a professor of ethnic studies and chair of the Department of Multicultural and Gender Studies at Chico State University. His books include Playing While White: Privilege and Power on and off the Field.