This blog post is a personal reflection of how I approached my class, “American Sport Since 1900” described in a previous post. For those of you unable (or unwilling!) to read the previous post, I will sum up. Our class was organized around the assertion that one can tell a lot about a society through…
By Matt Hodler I am using today’s blogpost as a discussion of how I am teaching a Sport History course this semester. It is a new approach toward teaching (for me), and this post serves two purposes: (1) it is an attempt to share a different approach with fellow educators, and (2) it is an…
Thrasher, Christopher David. Fight Sports and American Masculinity: Salvation in Violence from 1607 to the Present. Jefferson, NC: McFarland Publishing. Pp. 300. Notes and Index. $45.00 clothback. Reviewed by Matthew Hodler “Ambitious” is the first word that came to mind upon reading this book’s title and preface. Christopher David Thrasher, to his credit, attempts to…
Sociologist Alan Bairner argues that “sport and nationalism are arguably two of the most emotive issues in the modern world” and that supporting one’s national team is one primary way to demonstrate one’s national identity. We most recently saw this in the abundance of support given to the US Women’s National Team when they defeated Japan…
Released in 2007, Pride — a historical sport film about “the first black swim team” — came out during the same time as similar films (Coach Carter (2005), Glory Road (2006), The Express (2008)) also focusing on relationships between race and sport. It also primarily focuses on one individual (Coach Jim Ellis, played by Terrence Howard) in telling the story of how…
A few weeks ago pictures of dead fish floating at the Rio 2016 rowing venue spread throughout the internet. Many in the sporting media used it as an opportunity to discuss (possible) issues of pollution at the games and to wonder if Rio would be prepared for the games (if you missed them, you can…
Recently a video of an overtly racist chant sung by young, white fraternity men at the University of Oklahoma (OU) went “viral.” If you’re like me, you could not avoid seeing, hearing, or reading about this chant, which used violent language to brag about the fraternity’s racial exclusivity. The fraternity in question, SAE, is the only…
One of the aspects that I love most about teaching at a university is the opportunity to engage with young people, to introduce new ideas and encourage them to (re)think their positions as they develop their own ways of understanding their world. But, approaching teaching in this way can make me feel like a dentist…
Sport in American History 