History J495 Senior Seminar
Sports, Recreation, and Leisure in 20th century America
Spring 2008 - Class # 20540 – Tues 6:00-8:40pm – CA 537
Professor: Annie Gilbert Colemanoffice hours: in CA 503N
Email: 2-4:00Tues; 10-12 Thurs
Office/voice mail: 274-5817and by appointment
[the best way to reach me is through email; NOT Oncourse email]
Introduction and Goals
This course is the senior capstone seminar for history majors. It will build upon the content and skills you have developed throughout your college career and ask you to apply them to an original research project. We will discuss historical methods as well as content and theory; the use of primary and secondary sources as well as good writing. Students should expect to read critically, share their observations with the class, present their own work both orally and in writing at different stages of research, review their colleagues’ work thoughtfully, and revise their work in light of the constructive critiques they receive. I want you all be proud of the papers you write for this course, as they will represent a significant investment of your time and energy.
This course also takes fun seriously. A smart history of sports, recreation, and leisure can provide a window into politics, economics, gender, race, class formation, religion, and virtually any other topic. It can illustrate how participants and spectators defined and redefined themselves, it can show the influence of cultural norms or political systems, and it can also show how people contested those norms and systems. In other words, by looking carefully at what people did for fun and sport, historians can get a much deeper and broader picture of how society, culture, and power work.
This course speaks directly to the Principles of Undergraduate Learning. We will explore American society and culture most importantly, as we will be discussing sports and recreation as forms of cultural and political expression, identity formation, and as resources for community building. Themes of race, gender, and class will figure prominently in course readings and discussions, as will politics, landscape and the environment, and media, consumption, and spectacle. By the end of the course you will have a more sophisticated understanding of our society as well as how its diverse members interact. This class will refine communication and critical thinking skills through intense class discussion andpresentations as well as an original research paper of about 25 pages. This course will demand a strong basic knowledge of U.S. history and represents a challenge in terms of analysis, synthesis, and application of information, but the payoff is big. At the end of the semester you will look at what people do for fun and for sport with new eyes and brains – you will be able to see the multiple and contested meanings behind any given game, event, or activity – and you will be able to explain, as a historian, why they matter.
[For more on the PULS, see the History Dept web page:
Books
Michael Oriard, King Football: Sport and Spectacle in the Golden Age of Radio and Newsreels, Movies and Magazines, the Weekly and the Daily Press (North Carolina Press, 2003)
Mary Lynn Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History, 5th ed. (Bedford St. Martins, 2007)
Requirements
1. Intermediary assignments designed to build towards your final paper are required and will be graded on a check plus/minus scale unless otherwise noted. Your success on these assignments will likely influence both your participation and your final paper grades.They are due on the days noted below under the schedule of classes, and I will give you more information about what exactly they entail as we go. (30% total)
Topic and journal article
Revised topic and research questions
Annotated bibliography (5%)
Primary source report (5%)
Prospectus and revised bibliography (5%)
Narrative outline (5%)
Draft 1 (5%)
Draft 2 (5%)
2. Presentations of research (two) (5% each = 10%) Each will be about five minutes long. They will explain your research questions and argument by following the structure of your paper and also discuss how you have faced the challenges of your project. One on March 25 will discuss your paper as it stands as a first draft, and the second will assess your final draft on April 22, our last class meeting.
3. Peer reviews (two sets) (5% and 10% = 15%) You will be helping your classmates develop and refine their work twice by reading and critiquing drafts. I will hand out a guide and discuss this process with you as the semester progresses. Each review will be about 1 page long, single-spaced, and it will include your considered evaluation of the paper as well as thoughtful suggestions for revision.
4. Final Paper (25%) I will evaluate final papers on their originality and clarity of argument, their research and use of primary and secondary sources, their structure, organization, and writing, AND the extent to which students incorporate comments from the second draft. I will hand out and post the evaluation sheet I use as we approach the writing stage.
5. Participation (20%) This includes thoughtful responses to all reading assignments as well as to the instructor’s and your classmates’ ideas, questions, and research. This does not simply mean taking up air time; it means adding something to the discussion and moving our collective thinking forward in interesting ways. We will often workshop each other’s ideas, so keep an open mind, be generous with your energy, and turn this group of people into a powerful intellectual community.
Class Policies
1. Deadlines and Absences: I expect you to meet deadlines and due dates. Print out your assignments well ahead of time, and always save a copy. Late assignments will lose 3 points (out of 100) per day they are late. Plus they will really mess up the master plan for you, me, and everyone else. [If you are feeling overwhelmed about this course at any time or for any reason, please come talk with me – sooner is much better than later.] Since this class meets only once a week, it is your senior seminar, and it is based largely on group discussion, it is vital that everyone be here regularly. Attendance is mandatory. If you must miss due to some emergency, you need to contact me ahead of time, document the emergency, or both. Anyone who misses class will need to turn in a short additional writing assignment for that class.
2. Intellectual Honesty: Representing someone else’s words or ideas as your own or without proper acknowledgement is plagiarism. Plagiarism will result in failure of the work in question and may lead to disciplinary action from the university. See the Code of Student Conduct at: (Part II section G) as well as campus policies on academic misconduct: and come see me if you have questions. There is also a section Rampolla that explains plagiarism and how to avoid it, which I highly recommend.
3. Incomplete: This grade is only for people who have successfully completed almost all of the course work and have been prevented by significant and unanticipated circumstances from finishing all of their assignments. I do not like to use it.
Schedule of Assignments
Part One: Conceptualization, Background, and Secondary Sources
Jan. 8Introduction and Question Day
Dogtown and Z-Boys
Jan. 15Sports History Greatest Hits
*Come prepared to discuss the theses, arguments, and significance of:
Ellen Gruber Garvey, “Re-framing the Bicycle: Advertising-Supported Magazines and Scorching Women,” American Quarterly (March 1995): 66-101. (This is available electronically through JSTOR on the library’s home page.)
Richard Pierce, “More Than a Game: The Political Meaning of High School Basketball in Indianapolis,” from his book Polite Protest: The Political Economy of Race in Indianapolis 1920-1970 (Indiana University Press, 2005): 9-25. (This is available as an ebook through the IUPUI library – use IUCAT to look up the book, hit the link, and go.)
Philip Deloria, “’I am of the Body’: Thoughts on My Grandfather, Culture, and Sports” from his book Indians in Unexpected Places (University Press of Kansas, 2004). (handout) (over)
George Lipsitz, “The Silence of the Rams: How St. Louis School Children Subsidize the Super Bowl Champs,” from John Bloom and Michael Willard ed, Sports Matters: Race, Recreation, and Culture (New York University Press, 2002):225-245. (handout)
Jan. 22 Sports, Recreation, and Leisure Historiography
IUPUI Library visit
*first and second choice topics due; scholarly article due
Jan. 29Indiana Historical Society and State Library Visit
Meeting time and place TBA
*revised topic and four research questions due
*read first half of Oriard, King Football
Feb. 5King Football
*finish and come prepared to discuss Oriard, King Football
*annotated bibliography due – see Rampolla, 29-31 (you’ll need 6-10 sources)
Part Two: Primary Sources and Research
Feb. 12Primary Sources
*primary source reports due; bring scholarly articles to class
*read Rampolla chapter 2
Feb. 19Independent Meetings with Dr. Coleman
*prospectus and updated bibliography due
Feb. 26Research Week – No Class
Part Three: Writing
Mar. 4On Writing Well
*narrative outline due
*bring scholarly articles and Rampolla to class
Mar. 11Spring Break – No Class
Mar. 18Writing Week – No Class
Mar. 25Papers and the Critique Process
*First Drafts due to classmates
*Presentations
Apr. 1Peer Review
*first round of peer reviews due to authors and professor
Apr. 8Papers and the Review Process 2
*Second Drafts due to classmates and professor
Apr. 15Peer Review 2
*second round of peer reviews due to authors and professor
Apr. 22Final Papers and Presentations Due
More info on Assignments:
Primary Source Report – On February 12, you need to bring to class a summary of a type of primary source. This should be one page, front and back, single-spaced, plus a one page excerpt or example of the source. Bring one copy for each student in the class and one for the instructor.
Ideally, the source would be a kind you are planning to use yourself. As a back-up, it could be a kind of source used by the historians you are reading, but you would still need to look at examples of it for yourself. Possibilities include:
advertisements, annual reports, articles of incorporation, autobiographies, broadsides, cartoons, catalogues, cemetery records, census materials, church records, city directories, correspondence, court proceedings, minutes of a board of directors (or its committees), reports of officers, executive directors, etc., diaries and journals, editorials, films, government records (national, state, region, county, municipal), guidebooks, handbills, illustrations, immigration records, interviews, legal records, letters, maps, material artifacts, memoirs, military records, newspapers, novels, organizational records, pamphlets, petitions, photographs, plays, prescriptive writings, prison records, probate records, sermons, school records, social organization records, songs, speeches, tax records, tracts, travel accounts, vital records, and wills.
In your summary, you will define the source, explain how the source was created, indicate what information the source may (or may not) provide, refer to your exampleof source, and identify where additional information may be obtained that would guide a researcher in how to use the source effectively.
In class, you will present briefly (3-4 minutes) on the source and respond to questions from your classmates and the instructor.
Prospectus – see for a model and edit it down to include only sections on topic and research questions (including your proposed thesis statement and argument), secondary source essay, primary source essay, and bibliography. Yours should be about three or four pages (double spaced) not counting the bibliography. [we will discuss the Narrative Outline due in class]
Paper Draft 1 – due March 25 - needs to be at least 15 pages and coherent, with an especially solid introduction and articulation of your argument. It needs a beginning, a middle including at least two sections where you are analyzing primary sources to develop your argument, and at least an attempt at a conclusion. Draft 2 – should be the very best paper you can write, 20 pages not counting bibliography, complete. [I have a separate handout on Peer Reviews]
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