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 * Welcome to Sports and Society! **

I am excited to have the opportunity to teach this class again, and I hope in the end you will have the same response as previous years' seniors. As they would tell you if they had the chance, this course involves a good amount of reading, but it provides an eye-opening opportunity to consider the place of sports in American society.

Many historians have only come to accept “sports” as a suitable field of research in the past twenty or thirty years. Despite a number of attempts, I have yet to find a text that really suits my purposes. Instead we will rely on excerpts from a number of different texts and a number of articles from //Sports Illustrated// that provide some excellent historical perspectives.

During the early weeks of this course, your reading load might be a bit lighter while I provide you with some background on sports in pre-colonial, colonial, and early American history. At the same time, each of you will work on a digital poster project covering significant people or events in sports history. We'll use article and book chapters to cover American sports history in the 19th and 20th centuries, and we will use Susan Ware's //Title IX: A Brief History with Documents// to provide a case study in one of the more significant, recent, and still controversial stories related to sports and society in America.

My lectures and presentations, your posters, and our readings will help us to explore the nature of sports in America, their development since colonial times, their contributions to and their reflections of society at large, their impact on participants and fans, and major issues that have been central to the history of sports, among them racial and gender equality; gambling, cheating, and drugs; character; youth sports; collegiate sports; money and sports; violence in sports; and the relationship between sports and local, regional, and national identity.

Besides various readings (expect approximately 10 to 20 pages of reading per night), we will use documentary films and other resources, and I will //try// to hold occasional “movie nights” to view feature films related to topics we cover.

During the second term, each of you will take control of the curriculum. Each of you will lead the class for a day, basing the lesson on a book you will choose. This may sound intimidating right now, but dozens of former students have found this to be one of the most memorable and positive learning experiences of their Thayer career.

The success of this class will depend heavily upon your participation. Class discussions will falter if you do not do your reading regularly. Some of the reading may be challenging, but is not so different from some of the material you will be asked to read in college. Stick with it and do your best to make sense of what you read.

Grades will be based upon a combination of factors. In the winter term, I anticipate two major tests, one two- to three-page essay, your digital poster project, and a handful of reading quizzes. I will try to hold have one or two movie nights that will qualify as quiz grades. Tests and papers will be worth 100 points; each quiz will be worth 10 to 20 points. For the winter term, I will let you “drop” one quiz grade. In the second term, each of you will be required to teach a class based upon a book you select. This project will be extensive, and will represent a large percentage of your second term grade. It will include a proposal (in the first term), a book review, an optional class plan, a prepared homework assignment for the class, and your active role as teacher-for-a-day. I will model this exercise this term, and I will provide you with a rather extensive bibliography from which you may choose a book, or you may select an appropriate alternative I haven’t listed. You might want to begin to consider what book you will read now, as these presentations will begin when we return from Spring Break. Even when you are not presenting, you will be expected to prepare and participate in the discussions led by your classmates. We will still have occasional reading quizzes and two spring-term tests based upon the various presentations. For each term, class participation will count for 10% of the term grade.

As I have for most of my classes, I've established a wiki for my Sports & Society class. This site will become a place where I can post assignments, where we can share presentations we've made, and where we can document what we learn as we go along. I'm hoping that most of you have already joined the account. If you haven't, here's what you need to do:

Go to wikispaces.com; log in or create an account; go to http://tasportsandsociety12.wikispaces.com/ and ask to become a member of the wiki; your requests will come to me; I'll approve you and you'll be in.

Any questions? Game on!