Drop-in Hours

Fall 2023: 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:

• 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 articles in American Art, Film History, 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, 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. 

Courses

• Sport and Media
• Media History and Culture
• Sport, Scandal, and Strategic Communication in Media Culture
• The Business of Sport Communication
• Sports Writing
• Media, Sport, and Entertainment (Graduate Seminar) 
• The Cultural Industries and Cultural Studies (Graduate Seminar) 

Publications

• Vogan, T. (forthcoming). Exhibiting Ali’s Super Fights: The contested politics and brief history of closed-circuit boxing broadcasts. Film History, 30(3)
• Vogan, T. (2018). ABC Sports: The rise and fall of network sports television. University of California Press.
• Vogan, T. (2018). Sport and leisure. In D. Dochuk and J. Podair (Eds.) History of the 20th Century United States (pp. 337-348). New York: Routledge
• Vogan, T. (2018). ESPN: Live sports, documentary prestige, and on-demand culture. In D. Johnson (Ed.) The New Television Industries: A Guide to Changing Channels (pp. 107-115). New York: Routledge.
• Schwartz, D. & Vogan, T. (2017) The Players Tribune: Self-branding and boundary work in digital sports media. Journal of Sports Media
• Vogan, T. (2017) Monday Night Football and the Racial Roots of the Network TV Event. Television & New Media
• Vogan, T. (2016). LeRoy Neiman and the art of network sports television. American Art
• Hagood, M. & Vogan, T. (2016). The 12th man: Sound, space, and fandom in the contemporary National Football League. Popular Communication
• Vogan, T. (2015). ESPN: The Making of A Sports Media Empire. University of Illinois Press.
• Vogan, T. (2014). Keepers of the Flame: NFL Films and the Rise of Sports Media. University of Illinois Press.
• Burroughs, B. & Vogan T. (2015). Media industries and the sport scandal: Deadspin, Sports Illustrated, ESPN and the Manti Te’o hoax. International Journal of Sport Communication
• Vogan, T. (2014). Institutionalizing sport history in the contemporary sports television documentary. Journal of Sport History
• Vogan, T. & Dowling, D. (2014). Bill Simmons, Grantland.com, and ESPN’s corporate reinvention of literary sports writing online. Convergence.
• Dowling, D. & Vogan T. (2014). Can we ‘Snowfall’ this? Digital longform and the Race for the tablet market. Digital Journalism.
• Oates, T.P. & Vogan, T. (2014). The sporting paratext, reception, and the male domain in CBS’s ‘One Shining Moment.’ Communication & Sport
• Vogan, T. (2013). NFL Films and the art of selling football. Popular Communication
• Vogan, T. (2012). ESPN Films and the construction of prestige in contemporary sports television. International Journal of Sport Communication
• Vogan, T. (2010). Football’s wine cellar: The NFL Films archive. The Moving Image
• Vogan, T. (2010). Irrational power: Jack Johnson, prize fighting films, and documentary affect. Journal of Sport History

Awards

• First Place Faculty Paper, Sports Communication Interest Group. Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication, 2015