Welcome to the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports.

The Stark Center is a research center housed within the Department of Kinesiology & Health Education.  We are a unique combination of library, archive, and gallery/exhibit space.

An Unexpected Pleasure: Kissing the Ground in Equilibrium—A Search for the Origins of the Pushup

One of the things I enjoy most about the Stark Center are the requests we often get for information about some aspect of the history of physical culture. Most of those requests are handled by our incredible Stark Center staff but every now and then a request will make its way to my inbox and I find myself so intrigued that I end up doing research that wasn’t planned because the question made me curious too. This past Sunday was one of those days. I got an unexpected email from Denis Blinov, whom I’ve never met. “May I ask if you...

The cover of Joe Louis's How to Box pamphlet, complete with a photo of Joe Louis in boxing gloves against a red background.

Flipping Through History

When I first came to the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports, I knew almost nothing about the history of strength or the extraordinary figures who shaped it—aside from our renowned Director, Dr. Jan Todd, once known as the “Strongest Woman in the World.” I certainly didn’t know how to make a FlipBook, but I’m living proof that an old dawg can learn new tricks. Somewhere between the smell of old scrapbooks, faded photographs, and the delicate pages of century-old pamphlets, I fell in love with it all. I started learning to create FlipBooks as a means of...

Browse the Complete Journal Archive

The Stark Center features collections from around the world related to all aspects of physical culture and sports.

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