Anthropology 282b: Sport, Society, and Culture
Syllabus of sessions and readings
See
also the course
calendar and the writing
assignments page
1/13 Tu Overview of the course [audio
transcript]
cf.
“Dimensions
of Critical Sports Studies”
Part One: Formulating Sport Studies
1/15 Th Spectacle
and sport (part one): Professional wrestling
in Japan and the US [audio
transcript]
Kim Longinotto and Jana Williams, “GAEA Girls”
(video documentary), part one to be screened in class [WWK viewing
notes for GAEA Girls]
Sharon Mazer, Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle,
pp. 1-92. University of Mississippi
Press, 1998 [reading
notes]
For all
students taking this course, please complete the initial student survey here.
1/20 Tu Spectacle
and sport (part two): Professional wrestling in Japan and the
US [audio
transcript]
Kim Longinotto and Jana Williams, “GAEA Girls”
(video documentary), part two to be screened in class [WWK viewing
notes for GAEA Girls]
Sharon Mazer, Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle,
pp. 93-174. University of Mississippi
Press, 1998 [reading
notes]
1/22 Th Formulating
sport [audio
transcript]
“Gladiators:
Sports and Entertainment in the Roman World,” a video lecture by
Professor David Potter, Professor of Classical Studies, University of Michigan
(Institute of Mediterranean Studies, Video Lecture Series, Volume 4)
Please note that a two-page response paper
is due by Friday, January 23, at 2 p.m.
See the topic assignment here.
“Is this a sport?”:
For those of you in sections, please complete the following short
exercise before your meeting of the week, 1/26-1/29
1/27 Tu Sports
and modernity: the quest for excitement versus the quest for records [audio
transcript]
Allen Guttmann, “The
Development of Modern Sports.”
In Jay Coakley and Eric Dunning, Handbook of Sports Studies, pages
248-259. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2000.
Peter Radford,
“The
Greatest Ever Sporting Event,”
in his The Celebrated Captain Barclay: Sport, Gambling and Adventure in
Regency Times, pages 1-14 (Headline Books, 2001)
1/29 Th The quest for status and character: the
emergence of modern sports in Britain, the US, and Japan [audio
transcript]
Tony Money, “Football,” chapter 5 of his Manly
& Muscular Diversions: Public Schools and the Nineteenth-Century Sporting
Revival, pp. 97-124 (London: Duckworth, 1997)
Michael Oriard, selections from his Reading Football: How
the Popular Press Created an American Spectacle Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1993). Assignment is pages 25-56, 103-112, 142-146, and
189-216
Donald T. Roden,
"Baseball
and the Quest for National Dignity in Meiji Japan," American Historical
Review 85 (3): 511-534 [1980]
“Varieties of competition in
sport”: please complete the following short
exercise before your meeting of the week, 2/1-2/3
Part Two: Sport, Gender, and Race
1. The gender regime of sports
2/3 Tu Women taking the field? [audio transcript]
2/5 Th We Got Next?
[audio transcript]
Jere Longman, “Gaining
Ground and Breaking It: Female Athletes Finding New Challenges by Competing
with Men,” The New York Times, February 25, 2003
Department of Education,
Secretary’s Commission for Opportunity in Athletics, Open
to All: Title IX at Thirty. Final commission
report issued February 28, 2003
“Is Messner Right?”:
please complete the following short exercise
before your meeting of the week, 2/9-10
2. Sports, race, and
globalization
2/10 Tu Sport and race in
Black and White
S.L. Price, “What
Ever Happened to the White Athlete?” Sports Illustrated, December 8,
1997, pages 30-55
Malcolm Gladwell, “The
Sports Taboo: Why Blacks Are Like Boys and Whites Are Like
Girls,” The New Yorker, pages 50-55 [May 19, 1997]
Gerald Early, “Performance
and Reality: Race, Sports, and the Modern World,” The Nation,
267(5):11-20 [August 10, 1998]
Michael Eric Dyson, “Be
Like Mike? Michael Jordan and the Pedagogy of Desire,” in David L.
Andrews (editor), Michael Jordan, Inc.: Corporate Sport, Media Culture, and
Late Modern America, pages 259-268 (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001)
2/12 Th The dominance of Kenyan distance runners: “altitude or
attitude?” [audio transcript]
John Bale and Joe Sang, “Altitude
or Attitude: Regions and Myths,” chapter 6 of their Kenyan
Running: Movement Culture, Geography, and Global Change, pp. 138-162.
London: Frank Cass & Company, 1996.
Part Three: Case Studies in Modern Sports
1. Soccer in Great Britain
For our first case, we will consider soccer, which claims to be the
“world game.” Using the
broad and useful survey by one of the leading soccer scholars in Great Britain,
Richard Giulianotti, we will consider aspects of its history, its significance
in Great Britain, and some of the global locations where distinct soccer styles
have developed. Then, we will turn to
the particular case of one of the most notorious fan groups in Britain, those
who support the Millwall Football Club in a working-class district of southeast
London.
2/17 Tu The global game
through time and space [audio transcript]
Richard Giulianotti, Football:
A Sociology of the Global Game. Polity Press,
1999. Chapters 1-5.
[Notes on his
claims]
[Notes on his framework]
2/19 Th Club, city, country
in soccer: further
consideration of Giulianotti [audio transcript]
Richard Giulianotti, Football:
A Sociology of the Global Game. Polity Press,
1999. Chapters 6-8.
Please note that the first course essay is due by Thursday,
February 19, at 4:30 p.m. See the topic
assignment here
2/24 Tu Spectators,
fans, supporters, and hooligans: Millwall as a “structure of feeling” [audio transcript]
Gary Robson, “The
Lion Roars: Myth, Identity and Millwall Fandom,” in Gary Armstrong and Richard Giulianotti (editors), Fear and
Loathing in World Football. 61-76. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2001.
2. Football in the United States
For a second case, we turn to American football, sometimes claimed to be
the “other national pastime” or even the “real national
pastime.” It certainly features
what has become the single-most watched sports event in the US, the NFL Super
Bowl. Our reading will center on a
well-regarded but non-academic portrait of a Texas high school football and the
school and city that were in its thrall.
A documentary on another famous high school football power, Massillon HS
of Ohio, will allow us to make some comparative observations. Within the constraints of time, we will also
try to consider aspects of football’s historical development at both the
university and professional level.
2/26 Th High school
football in the US: towns, teams, and dreams [audio transcript]
H. G. Bissinger, Friday
Night Lights. New York: De
Capo Press, 2000 (10th edition).
3/2 Tu Going up the ranks:
football at the high school, college, and pro levels
3/4 Th screening of “Go Tigers”
H. G. Bissinger, Friday
Night Lights. New York: De
Capo Press, 2000 (10th edition).
Viewing
notes for ‘Go Tigers,’ a
documentary on the 1999 season of the Massillon (Ohio) High School football
team.”
In these two sessions, we will take up the case of baseball, which many
consider to be the American counterpart to soccer. Here, though, our focus will not be on the
sport’s “original” American form but rather on one of its
exported/appropriated locations, Japan, where baseball was deeply embedded as
the “national pastime.”
3/23 Tu “Baseball
Samurai Style” [audio
transcript of this session]
Robert Whiting, selections from his You've
Gotta Have Wa: When Two Cultures Collide on the
Baseball Diamond (New York: Macmillan, 1989)
“Baseball in Japan” (video
documentary) (read my Viewing
notes) [see segment
in Real Media on Hanshin Tiger fans at Kōshien Stadium]
3/25 Th “You
Gotta Have Guts”: reconsidering the samurai style [audio transcript of this session]
William W Kelly, "Blood and Guts in Japanese Professional Baseball." In
Sepp Linhart and Sabine Frühstück (eds.), The Culture
of Japan as Seen Through Its Leisure, pp. 95-112. Albany: SUNY Press, 1998
4.
Women in Professional Sports: The Case of the LPGA
3/30 Tu Paradoxes and pressures of elite women
athletes
Todd W. Crosset, Outsiders in the
Clubhouse: The World of Women's Professional Golf, pages 1-171 (Albany: SUNY Press,
1995)
4/1 Th Social structures of individual sports
Todd W. Crosset, Outsiders in the
Clubhouse: The World of Women's Professional Golf, pages 175-226 (Albany: SUNY
Press, 1995)
5. The modern Olympics: the “five-ring circus”
4/6 Tu History, myth, modernity
Kristine Toohey and A. J. Veal,
selections from their The Olympic Games: A Social Science Approach
(Wallingford, GB and New York: CABI Publishing, 2000)
John J. MacAloon, “Olympic
Games and the Theory of Spectacle,” in John J. MacAloon (editor), Rite,
Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals Toward a Theory
of Cultural Performance, pages 241-280 (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1984)
4/8 Th The Olympics as
“mega-event”
Robert E. Rinehart, “Sport
as Postmodern Tourism: Warp Speed in Barcelona (Olympism, Ideology,
Experience),” chapter 8 of his Players All: Performances in Contemporary
Sport, pages 111-137 (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998)
6. Post-sports, post-modernity
4/13 Tu Alternative sports
Becky Beal, "Disqualifying
the official: an exploration of social resistance through the subculture of
skateboarding," Sociology of Sport Journal 12 (3): 252-267 [1995]
4/15 Th Extreme sports and the X-Games
Robert E. Rinehart, “Sport
as Constructed Audience: A Case Study of ESPN’s The eXtreme Games,” chapter 7 of his Players All: Performances
in Contemporary Sport, pages 98-110 (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,
1998)
Part Four: Final course considerations
4/20 Tu
Please note that the third course essay is
due by Wednesday, April 21, at 2 p.m.
See the topic assignment here
4/22 Th