Wrestling Books

[The Gaffer]

8 hours ago, SuperBacon said:

and is littered with inaccuracies.

It's what he would have wanted, brother. 

[Snitsky's back acne]

12 hours ago, Chico Torres said:

Thank you Dr. Snitskys Back Acne, I will definitely keep an eye out for your work and please share when it’s available.

I am sure you are aware of the professional wrestling studies association, a group of academics who publish a journal and have an annual conference https://www.prowrestlingstudies.org/

 

Thank you. Yes, I intend to submit a paper to their next symposium. I have wanted to for a few years but my thesis kept getting in the way.  

Edited August 18 by Snitsky's back acne

[BomberPat]

 

16 hours ago, Chico Torres said:

@BomberPat (or anyone else) any good recommendations for academic works on wrestling? I read a book years ago called Steel Chair to the Head which had a few interesting essays (including one on current forum fave subject of 1991 WWF) as well as others like Wrestling to Rasslin and a book by Sharon Mazer. It’s been years since I last read them but they have some fundamental errors that are hard to overlook and make you question the academic rigour that went into them if they make mistakes like that. But always interested in some academic perspectives on this weird entertainment that we like that moves beyond Barthes.

15 hours ago, Snitsky's back acne said:

"Performance and Professional Wrestling" is a really good book compiled by a group of academics who specialise in pro wrestling. It covers a variety of topics and wrestling genres.

I haven't got round to it yet, but I can vouch for a lot of the writers in it - Heather Levi wrote a fantastic book looking at Lucha Libre through an anthropological lens (it's very accessible, not a dry academic thing); The World of Lucha Libre, Benjamin Litherland wrote a fantastic PhD thesis on the early history of British wrestling (and is maybe the first writer I ever saw pose the question not as "why is wrestling fake?", but "why isn't every other sport?"), Heather Bandenburg I'm less used to in an academic setting but she's a thoroughly good egg and her book Unladylike is really good, and Clare Warden is a fantastic academic that I've worked closely with in the past. 

There's a collection called Women Love Wrestling that I found a bit of a mixed bag; it's not an academic publication, so while there's a couple of more academic essays in there, there's also some fan-writing about specific matches or bits of wrestling history, and some that just read like internet rants. 

[Snitsky's back acne]

10 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

 

I haven't got round to it yet, but I can vouch for a lot of the writers in it - Heather Levi wrote a fantastic book looking at Lucha Libre through an anthropological lens (it's very accessible, not a dry academic thing); The World of Lucha Libre, Benjamin Litherland wrote a fantastic PhD thesis on the early history of British wrestling (and is maybe the first writer I ever saw pose the question not as "why is wrestling fake?", but "why isn't every other sport?"), Heather Bandenburg I'm less used to in an academic setting but she's a thoroughly good egg and her book Unladylike is really good, and Clare Warden is a fantastic academic that I've worked closely with in the past. 

 

Claire Warden, one of the contributors to Performance and Professional Wrestling, was the external examiner for my viva. 

I reviewed the book for a journal in the early days of my research and, although it's been about 6 years since I read it, it is the first one I recommend if somebody wants to dip their toe into pro wrestling academia.