Publication Alert: Analysis of Long COVID in Pro Sports
The Debilitating Discourses of Long COVID: The Public Pedagogies of Sporting Bodies
This book chapter, co-authored with Dr. Mary McDonald (Georgia Tech) is now published in the new book Long COVID and Society: International Perspectives – a collection of diverse scholarly work edited by Dr. Deborah Lupton (University of New South Wales).
As part of our larger COVID Sports Project, we examine media narratives portraying athlete experiences of Long COVID. Our analysis focuses on three professional athletes: WNBA player A.D. Durr and NHL players Brandon Sutter and Jonathan Toews. We identify three main themes across this media coverage: athletes’ symptoms and suffering; militarized metaphors of ‘battling’ illness; and uncertainty in returning to the (sport) workplace. We demonstrate how these narratives serve contradictory functions. On one hand, these athletes’ stories were high profile examples of how even young, healthy people were not immune from COVID’s devastating effects; on the other, this media coverage was largely focused on individualized narratives of struggle and hard work – themes that deflected attention away from pandemic realities of widespread ableism, health and workplace disparities, and systemic inequities that make some people more susceptible to illness and death.
We are honoured to have our work sit alongside critical perspectives from Long COVID experts including folks who have experienced the illness themselves.
Check out the book here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-96-9168-5