The Cheer Reader

"When we set out to make Cheer, I had no idea how deep cheerleading's roots ran—or how much I didn't know. Natalie Adams changed that. Her scholarship illuminates cheerleading as a cultural mirror, reflecting our country's evolving ideas about gender, race, and athleticism. The Cheer Reader is the book the sport has always deserved: rigorous, surprising, and full of heart. If watching Cheer made you love cheerleaders, reading this book will make you understand them." - Greg Whiteley, creator of Netflix's Cheer and America's Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders

"The Cheer Reader is an engaging, insightful, and wide-ranging treatment of cheerleading from the early twentieth century to the present. Adams's anthology makes it obvious that the study of cheerleading offers a way to understand major themes in American history and culture—like sexism, capitalism, popular media, exploitation, and embodied activism—and thus enriches our knowledge of both sport and society. The writing is lively and readable, without sacrificing academic seriousness, and it will appeal to both a scholarly audience and anyone with an interest in cheerleading." - Susan K. Cahn, University at Buffalo, author of Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Women's Sport

"The Cheer Reader shows that cheer is full of contradictions: it is capitalist, enterprising, feminine, feminist, gender-segregated and co-ed, wholesome and sexualized. These essays, written by authors who clearly know the sport inside out, demonstrate that among many things, cheer is resilient. This book is an amazing source of knowledge and a fascinating read." - Georgia Cervin, University of Western Australia, author of Degrees of Difficulty: How Women's Gymnastics Rose to Prominence and Fell from Grace