Fred Mason

Associate Professor

PhD

Kinesiology, Faculty of

KIN 324

Fredericton

fmason@unb.ca
1 506 453 5021



Research interests

  • The history of Parasports, with links to medical history from the late 19th Century on sport and the media, gender, ethnicity and disability
  • Ultrarunning as sporting community and cultural practice
  • Ethnographic methods with sports fan communities
  • The scholarship of teaching and learning at the university level

Biography

Fred Mason is an associate professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology at the University of New Brunswick, where he teaches and researches sports history and sports sociology.

Fred has been at UNB since 2006, won multiple faculty-level teaching awards and was named University Teaching Scholar in 2018.

Research projects

  • Ethnographic methods and interviews with soccer fans about inclusion in the stands
  • Multiple projects on sport literature and film, including cultural responses to hockey enforcers, and sport in science fiction and horror writing

Fred is an active contributor to the Indigenous Hockey Research Network (IHRN), a SSHRC-funded network of academics, indigenous sports organizations and indigenous-led hockey schools. Through collaborative projects led by indigenous community partners, IHRN pursues “a radically different vision of the game, wherein hockey is not only safer and more inclusive, but expressive of indigenous cultural values and an incubator for anti-racism and decolonial change” (IHRN, 2023).

Publications

Fred Mason, “Covering distance, Coming-of-age and Communicating Subculture: David Carroll's Young Adult Sports Novel Ultra,” in Jamie Dopp & Angie Abdou (Eds.), Not Hockey: Critical Essays on Canada’s Other Sport Literature, 2023, 47-60.

Fred Mason, “The Tragedy of the Enforcer in Lynn Coady’s The Antagonist and Jeff Lemire’s Roughneck,” In Cheryl A. MacDonald and Jonathan R.J. Edwards (Eds.), Overcoming the Neutral Zone Trap: Hockey’s Agents of Change, Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2022, 247-269.

Fred Mason, "Notes on the pervasiveness of injuries in professional wrestling in the Atlantic Canadian circuit, as seen from ringside," Survive & Thrive: A Journal for Medical Humanities and Narrative as Medicine. Vol. 8, 2, (2022) Article 5. (12 pp).

Terri Byers, Emily Hayday, Fred Mason, Phillip Lunga, & Daneka Headley, “Innovation for Positive Sustainable Legacy from Mega Sports Events: Virtual Reality as a Tool for Social Inclusion Legacy for Paris 2024 Paralympic Games.” Frontiers in Sports and Active Living: Sport, Leisure and Tourism, Vol. 3 (15 pp).

Fred Mason, “A (Somewhat) Accidental Sports Tourist: Watching the Women’s World Cup from the Ground.” In: Molly Yanity & Danielle Sarver Coombs (Eds.), 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup: Media, Fandom, and Soccer’s Biggest Stage. Cham, Switzerland. Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, pp. 159-179.

Terri Byers, Fred Mason, and Phillip Lunga, “Sport Management Education in Response to COVID-19 Pandemic: An Atlantic Canada Perspective.” In Mike Rayner and Tom Webb (Eds.). Sport Management Education: Global Perspectives and Implications for Practice, London: Routledge (2021), 216-228.

Fred Mason, “W.P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe: The Fairy Tale, the Hero’s Quest, and the Magic Realism of Baseball,” in Angie Abdou and Jamie Dopp (Eds.), Writing the Body in Motion: A Critical Anthology on Canadian Sport Literature, Athabasca, AB: University of Athabasca Press, 2018, pp 1-14.

Fred Mason, “The Long Walk: Stephen King’s Near-Future Critique of Sport and Contemporary Society.” The Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence, Vol. II, no. 2 (2018), 404-418.