About

Daniel A. Gilbert is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Illinois College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. He specializes in U.S. labor and cultural history, with current research interests including the history of public employee unionism and the role of sports in the American workplace. Gilbert has received recognition for his work, including the John T. Dunlop Scholar Award from the Labor & Employment Relations Association and the Baseball Research Award from the Society for American Baseball Research. His academic background includes a Ph.D. from Yale University and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. Gilbert also holds associate professorships at the School of Labor and Employment Relations, the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, and the Department of History. His scholarly contributions include exploring themes such as athletic labor, sports in the context of modern U.S. workplaces, and labor activism in college football.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Ancient history
• Classics
• Art history
• Library science
• History

Selected publications

• Teaching U.S. History through Sports

  Journal of American History · 2020 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • History
  • Library science

  Teaching U.S. History through Sports Teaching U.S. History through Sports. Ed. by Brad Austin and Pamela Grundy. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2019. xiv, 343 pp. $34.95.) Daniel A Gilbert Daniel A Gilbert University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 107, Issue 3, December 2020, Pages 729–730, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaaa361 Published: 01 December 2020

  PublisherDOI

• The Gridiron and the Gray Flannel Suit: NFL Football and the Modern U.S. Workplace

  Journal of Sport and Social Issues · 2018-02-07 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Examining three critical periods of transformation in the history of professional football in the United States, this article demonstrates the centrality of the workplace to the development of the National Football League (NFL). The article argues that the NFL originated in the welfare capitalism of the early 1920s; that mass-mediated narratives about corporate management drove pro football’s coming-of-age in the 1950s and 1960s; and that fantasy football—the NFL’s most distinctive new form of spectatorship in the age of digital capitalism—positioned fans as imaginary managers of human capital. Taken together, these three pivotal moments demonstrate the inextricable links between changes in professional sports and transformations in the organization of work.

  PublisherDOI

• Consuming Athletic Labor: A Special Issue of <i>JSSI</i>

  Journal of Sport and Social Issues · 2018-04-21

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Boone Dam Test Grout Program: Objectives, Engineering Design, and Observations

  Grouting 2017 · 2017-07-06 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  On October 20, 2014 a sinkhole appeared near the downstream toe area of the earthfill embankment at Boone Dam, followed by turbid seepage discharge into the tailrace. These events initiated a large-scale, multi-faceted response by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and its engineering partners. Seepage issues were determined to be related to internal erosion and loss of soils within the karst foundation. Evaluation of grouting techniques for short-term and long-term mitigation were considered. Many questions had to be considered: 1) What are the objectives to be addressed by grouting? 2) What grouting techniques are viable to satisfy the objectives in a karst environment with significant clay infilling? 3) What are the uncertainties, risks, and benefits of grouting at Boone Dam? 4) How can these uncertainties, risks, and benefits be evaluated? A test grouting program (i.e., field study) was designed and executed to evaluate the potential for low mobility grouting (LMG) techniques for treatment of the soil-infilled karst. Multiple test areas were designed, each with specific objectives, hole layouts, grouting techniques, instrumentation, and engineering evaluation factors. The program was designed to allow field adjustments to be made by the engineering team based on observed performance and long-term mitigation strategies. The study demonstrated that the behavior of LMG is dependent on the slump of the mix, grain size distribution of the aggregate, and the presence or absence of fly ash. The study also demonstrated that displacement grouting (using LMG) within the epikarst (transition zone between soil and karstic limestone) may result in significant and sometimes unanticipated piezometric and ground responses.

  PublisherDOI

• Not (Just) about the Money: Contextualizing the Labor Activism of College Football Players

  American studies · 2016-01-01 · 8 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Book review: Marvin Miller, Baseball Revolutionary

  International Review for the Sociology of Sport · 2016-03-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Expanding the Strike Zone

  2013-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• The Generation of Public Intellectuals

  Labor Studies Journal · 2013-03-01 · 17 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Observers from a variety of quarters have remarked in recent years that contemporary civic life lacks the great public minds that helped to shape the public discourse of earlier generations. The most pressing crisis facing intellectual life in the United States in the age of the corporate university, however, is not a lack of great public thinkers but rather a quickly eroding public sphere, of which university teachers and researchers are key members. Examining struggles over and emerging from the conditions of contemporary academic work, this article recasts the public intellectual debate. It argues that the academic labor movement, in responding to the conditions of the corporate university and broader challenges to the public sphere, contains powerful models of public intellectual practice. In particular, the article highlights graduate employee unionism as critical public intellectual work.

  PublisherDOI

• The Federal League of Baseball Clubs: The History of an Outlaw Major League, 1914–1915

  Journal of Sport History · 2010-04-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Book Review| April 01 2010 The Federal League of Baseball Clubs: The History of an Outlaw Major League, 1914–1915 Wiggins, Robert Peyton. The Federal League of Baseball Clubs: The History of an Outlaw Major League, 1914–1915. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Company, 2009. Pp. vi+340. Notes, black-and-white illustrations, and index. $49.95 hb. Daniel A. Gilbert Daniel A. Gilbert Macalester College Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Sport History (2010) 37 (1): 187–188. https://doi.org/10.5406/jsporthistory.37.1.187 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Daniel A. Gilbert; The Federal League of Baseball Clubs: The History of an Outlaw Major League, 1914–1915. Journal of Sport History 1 January 2010; 37 (1): 187–188. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jsporthistory.37.1.187 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of Sport History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2010 University of Illinois Press2010 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

  PublisherDOI

• The Federal League of Baseball Clubs: The History of an Outlaw Major League, 1914—1915 (review)

  Journal of Sport History · 2010-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Jeffrey S. Dingrando

  Stantec (United States)

  4 shared

• Scottie L. Barrentine

  Tennessee Valley Authority

  4 shared

• Daniel B. Rogers

  Tennessee Valley Authority

  4 shared

• James Warner

  Tennessee Valley Authority

  4 shared

Awards & honors

• John T. Dunlop Scholar Award, Labor & Employment Relations A…
• Baseball Research Award, Society for American Baseball Resea…