Week 1: Introduction

August 23 (Thursday)

READINGS:

  • Syllabus

Week 2: Thinking about Sport History

August 28 (Tuesday) – Ritual and Spectacle

READINGS:

  • Clifford Geertz, “Deep play: Notes on the Balinese cockfight,” Daedalus 134.4 (Fall 2005): 56-86.

  • Roland Barthes, “The World of Wrestling,” Mythologies (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972).

August 30 (Thursday) – From Game to Sport

READINGS:

  • Allen Guttmann, “Play, Games, Contests, Sports” and “From Ritual to Record,” in From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).

Week 3: Early College Sports and Amateurism

September 4 (Tuesday) – Postwar Sporting Culture

READINGS:

  • Amanda Brickell Bellows, “How the Civil War Created College Football,” New York Times, 1 Jan. 2015. (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/01/how-the-civil-war-created-college-football/) – write a précis on this one!!

  • S.W. Pope, Patriotic Games, Introduction, Part I.

September 6 (Thursday) – Institutionalizing College Sport

READINGS:

  • John Higham, “The Reorientation of American Culture in the 1890s,” Hanging Together: Unity and Diversity in American Culture. Edited by Carl J. Guarneri. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2001).

Week 4: From Scandal to Crisis

September 11 (Tuesday) – Fin de Siècle Scandals

READINGS:

  • S.W. Pope, Patriotic Games, Chapters 3 and 5. Memo on Chapter 5.

September 13 (Thursday) – Saving Football from Itself

READINGS:

  • “Editorial,” Our Animal Friends, 1906. Précis
  • S.W. Pope, Patriotic Games, Chapter 7.

Week 5: Carlisle vs. Army

September 18 (Tuesday) – Book Discussion

READINGS:

  • Carlisle vs. Army

September 20 (Thursday) – 1920s and 1930s

READINGS:

  • None.

REACTION PAPER 1 DUE


Week 6: Towards the Modern NCAA

September 25 (Tuesday) – A New University

READINGS:

  • Gregory Kaliss, Men’s College Athletics and the Politics of Racial Equality, pp 41-73. Memo

September 27 (Thursday) – Reform in the 1940s

READINGS:

  • Ronald L. Smith, Pay for Play, pp. 88-99.

Week 7: A Changing Landscape

October 2 (Tuesday) – Welcome to the Big Time

READINGS:

October 4 (Thursday) – Not a thing.

FALL BREAK!!!


Week 8:

October 9 (Tuesday) – Race and the 1950s and 1960s

READINGS:

  • Kaliss, pp. 74-137. Memo.

October 11 (Thursday) – The New Plantation?

READINGS:

  • Billy Hawkins, The New Plantation: Black Athletes, college Sports, and Predominantly White NCAA Institutions, Chapters 2 and 4.

Week 9: Gender and College Sport

October 16 (Tuesday) – The Challenge of Title IX

READINGS:

  • Title XIX document set.

October 18 (Thursday) – Equity in Sport

READINGS:

  • Smith, Pay for Play, 141-150. Memo.

  • Don Sabo and Janie Victoria Ward, “Wherefore Art Thou Feminisms? Feminist Activist, Academic Feminisms, and Women’s Sports Advocacy,” Scholar and Feminist Online 4(2006) (http://sfonline.barnard.edu/sport/sabo_ward_01.htm)


Week 10: The Business of Amateurism I

October 23 (Tuesday) – Discussion of A Payroll to Meet

READINGS:

  • Finish A Payroll to Meet

October 25 (Thursday) – The Knight Commission

READINGS:

  • None.

REACTION PAPER 2 DUE.


Week 11: The Business of Amateurism II

October 30 (Tuesday) – Media and College Sport

Watch in-class The Business of Amateurs

November 1 (Thursday) – Pay to Play

READINGS:


Week 12: No Class – Group Meetings and Research

I will be in London at a conference.

November 6 (Tuesday)

November 8 (Thursday)


Week 13: Health, Sex, Safety

November 13 (Tuesday) –

READINGS:

  • “Women’s Hockey Grows Bigger, Faster, and Dire,” 18 December 2015, New York Times

  • HBO Real Sports, “Post-college medical care”

November 15 (Thursday) –

READINGS:

  • TBD.

Week 14: Group Work

November 20 (Tuesday)

Group meetings with Dr. Black.

November 22 (Thursday) – Thanksgiving

READINGS:

None! Have a great Thanksgiving!


Week 15: Group Presentations

November 27 (Tuesday) – Groups I-III

November 29 (Thursday) – Groups IV-VI


Week 16:

December 4 (Tuesday) – Wrapup