“We now come to the most critical yet most prickly of all questions: does any of this matter beyond the martial arts and combat sports, symbolically rich but socially marginal activities after all…The greatest challenge that the fighting... Continue Reading →
*** Our Monday update comes in the form of an article by Dr. Jared Miracle hosted at the Martial Arts Studies journal webpage. In it he explores the roles of two individuals, Donn Draeger and John “Count Dante” Keehan,... Continue Reading →
“Without ‘letters,’ the effort to spread the martial arts across the nation is bound to fail.” -Cai Yangwu, a slogan of the Jingwu (Pure Martial) Association. Introduction: Books Are the Way It may... Continue Reading →
The Kukri in Three Symbolic Registers As regular readers will know, I have a keen interest in both the history of bladed weapons and vintage postcards. The kukri, a type of fighting knife from... Continue Reading →
Introduction: Rational Choice Theory in Martial Arts Studies This essay picks up on a few threads in my ongoing attempt to parse out whether there is a place for “rational choice theory” in martial... Continue Reading →
The following is guest post by Sixt Wetzler, dvs-Kommission Kampfkunst & Kampfsport (sixt.wetzler@gmail.com). While Martial Arts Studies is, by its very nature, an international and interdisciplinary subject, we generally see relatively little discussion of the scholarship that is happening in... Continue Reading →
Introduction: Is there room for rationality in the martial arts? The study of hand combat suggests many types of questions. Following the “levels of analysis” typology I tend to mentally organize these into three categories; the... Continue Reading →
The following essay is a guest post by Jared Miracle, who recently completed his doctoral training at Texas A&M University under the supervision of Prof. Thomas Green and is currently on the academic job market. Dr. Miracle has conducted extensive... Continue Reading →
We are delighted to announce the arrival of a new academic journal Martial Arts Studies: Martial Arts Studies is a peer reviewed, open access, online, academic journal dedicated to publishing the highest quality academic work on... Continue Reading →
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