One thing I’ve talked about in my research, here on Twitter, and with @EndofSportPod is the pro-American (nationalist), triumphalist bent to Cold War sport history. It may also characterize other cultural fields related to the CW, but this is what I know.

Very, very few people in my sport history field in North America can speak languages other than English, and maybe Spanish. This results in the reading of American sources primarily. This is a HUGE problem.

My Hungarian isn’t great by any means. It never will be. But there are scholarships to learn German, Russian, Polish, & *of course* non-Euro languages, as well as summer language programs. Some in the US that offer scholarships!

There really aren’t many reasons why people *aren’t* doing it from my perspective. It takes time and a lot of effort. But this is what it takes to move beyond our harmful Western Euro-American perspective when it comes to CW sport. Otherwise we’re telling the same histories.