Out of Bounds explores the trajectories and challenges of exceptional men and women athletes who later became outstanding academic scholars. The book reports findings from participatory, qualitative research, and problematizes ways we have come to think about the separation and integration of athletic and academic practices ¿ embodied in both institutions and individuals, and reflected through intersecting categories and experiences of race, gender, and social class. Through the provocative and surprising narratives of gifted athletes who became prolific scholars, this book offers significantly new ways of thinking about the connections, contradictions, and possibilities of sports and schools.

The Authors: Jabari Mahiri is Professor of Education in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has been a faculty member since receiving his Ph.D. in English in 1992 from the University of Illinois, Chicago. Dr. Mahiri is the author of Shooting for Excellence: African American and Youth Culture in New Century Schools (1998), Digital Tools in Urban Schools (2010), and the editor of What They Don¿t Learn in School: Literacy in the Lives of Urban Youth (2004) and the forthcoming book, Virtual Lives: Nerdfighters, Scarlet Writers, Little Sisters, Future Souls, and Future Schools.
Derek Van Rheenen is Adjunct Professor of Education in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has been a faculty member since receiving his Ph.D. in cultural studies at Berkeley in 1997. He coordinates the Cultural Studies of Sport in Education M.A. in the Graduate School of Education. Dr. Van Rheenen¿s publications include «The Promise of Soccer in America: the Open Play of Ethnic Subcultures», «Boys Who Play Hopscotch: The Historical Divide of a Gendered Space», «Non-cognitive Predictors of Student Athletes¿ Academic Performance» (with Herbert D. Simons), and «Academic Motivation and the Student Athlete» (with Herbert D. Simons and Martin V. Covington).