Drop-in Hours

Spring 2024: Tuesday & Thursday: 11:00 am - 12:30 pm 

What is Travis’s story?

My research and teaching center on sport, media, and U.S. culture. I am especially interested in film and television, media industries, documentary, and how understandings of "high" and "low" culture figure into these topics.

I focus most of my research energy on writing books like these:

• LeRoy Neiman: The Life of America’s Most Beloved and Belittled Artist (University of Chicago Press)
• The Boxing Film: A Cultural and Transmedia History (Rutgers University Press)
• Sporting Realities: Critical Readings of the Sports Documentary (University of Nebraska Press). Co-edited with Samantha N. Sheppard
• ABC Sports: The Rise and Fall of Network Sports Television (University of California Press)
• ESPN: The Making of the Sports Media Empire (University of Illinois Press)
• Keepers of the Flame: NFL Films and the Rise of Sports Media (University of Illinois Press)

Aside from books, I have published or will soon publish articles in American Art, Film History, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Convergence, Television & New Media, Popular Communication, Communication & Sport, Journal of Sport History, The Moving Image, and various other journals and anthologies.

Beyond my scholarship, I have served as a contributor to and source for media outlets that include the New York Times, NPR’s Marketplace, The Guardian, Washington Post, CNN, Wired, HuffPost, The Athletic and Deadspin.

I am currently associate editor of the Journal of Sport History and co-editor of the University of Illinois Press book series Studies in Sports Media.

If you're interested in learning more about my research, teaching, or editorial work, send me an email and we can talk.