Past Time: Baseball, American Society, and the World

Richard Chapman

This Inquiry Seminar studies issues and questions surrounding the social history of baseball, broadly defined, using multidisciplinary methods and sources from history, literature, sociology, journalism, and popular culture. Though using the structure and history of professional baseball as a shared narrative, the seminar focuses heavily on the mutual exchange between the game and the wider society including consideration of baseball's social and cultural influence beyond US shores. Topics include but are not limited to, the game's origins; its formative role in shaping American culture and identity; women, gender, and baseball; recreational and professional cultures; race and integration; and baseball's place in Japanese and Latin American societies. The schedule is rigorous and demanding, but the topics promise to excite, enchant, instruct, and provoke. Students will develop and write a substantial research paper based on original sources. Female and male students with serious interests in social history, cultural studies, and/or recreational and sports history are especially encouraged to enroll. WC