In October 2022, the five sports scholars and journalists who host Burn It All Down: The Feminist Sports Podcast You Need came to campus to inaugurate the new Minor in Sport, Media, and Culture.Burn It All Down has posted over 265 episodes and reached the 1 million download mark two years ago. Shireen Ahmed, Amira Rose Davis, Brenda Elsey, Lindsay Gibbs, and Jessica Luther are all active academics, professional journalists, or both, and authors of a wide range of high-profile scholarly and journalistic publications.
Burn It All Down hosted a live podcast in Browning Cinema, which about 75 students, faculty, staff, and members of the public attended. During the group presentation, each host brought their own area of research and expertise to bear on current events in the sports world related to athlete labor. In the episode they share their favorite Notre Dame trivia, talked about how the myth women's sports are in peril is used as a shield to defend actions of abuse and mistreatment; discussed the lack of physical and mental health protection for athletes, gendered violence, and described the importance of labor unions in sport.
This podcast is available to the public as Episode 265: Live from Notre Dame on Protecting Labor in Sport. A lively session of Q&A followed their presentation, during which students, faculty, staff, and other members of the community demonstrated deep engagement.
Their visit was a big success for students, faculty, staff, and the College of Arts and Letters. This event helped showcase the significance of sports studies research and professional investigative journalism to new audiences within the College and in Athletics. In addition to the live taping, the hosts of Burn It All Down met with more than two dozen students over breakfast at the Morris Inn, to discuss their research and answer questions related to the student’s own projects and scholarly interests. In between sessions, Amira Rose Davis and Brenda Elsey interviewed Jack Swarbrick, Notre Dame’s Vice President and James E. Rohr Director of Athletics.
Since their visit the BIAD team has gone on hiatus, but you can still listen to any of their 267 episodes and interviews on burnitalldownpod.com, and you can watch highlights of their visit to Notre Dame right here!
This visit kicked off the first official semester of the Minor in Sport, Media, and Culture (SMAC) with great success, raising Notre Dame’s campus engagement with sports studies research and simultaneously raising Notre Dame’s and the SMAC minor’s visibility to the public.