American studies and JMC Professor Thomas Oates has received an Arts and Humanities Initiative 2020-20201 Grant for his project Crossover: A Cultural History of Playground Basketball.

Given by the Office of the Vice President for Research, AHI grants are available for humanities scholarship and work in the creative, visual, and performing arts.

Description of Prof. Oates' project:

This research examines how playground basketball, or “streetball” has been exhibited and taken up in European contexts. I am interested in how streetball is marketed to European audiences and how European people have taken up streetball to achieve social and political goals. To answer those questions, I will undertake research at two sites in Northern Europe where streetball is performed. These sites illustrate two distinctive ways that streetball has been taken up outside the United States – as a structured competition, staged for commercial purposes, and as a means of facilitating social integration among young people.

In Antwerp, Belgium, a major international 3-on-3 (3x3) tournament will be staged in the lead-up to the Tokyo Olympics. The three-player variant of basketball, played on half of a regulation basketball court has grown dramatically in the past few years, and will be included as part of the Summer Olympic games for the first time in 2021. It is arguably the dominant form through which streetball has become internationalized and institutionalized. 

In Copenhagen, Denmark, playground basketball has been uniquely adapted in the interest of social justice. There and in three other cities across Denmark, the nonprofit GAME has built several “streetmekkas” – recreation sites that offer basketball courts, parkour courses, skate parks, and other spaces designed to facilitate recreation for urban, Danish youth. GAME was founded in 2002 with the aim of creating “Exciting, urban and innovative...inspired by several forms of streetball played worldwide and is considered the world's number one urban team sport.”

This study will contribute to a book project with the working title Crossover: A Cultural History of Playground Basketball.