Styles of the World: UIUC Baseball 1998-2008

KIN199F08

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/11617 Copy

Description

Title

Styles of the World: UIUC Baseball 1998-2008

Author(s)

KIN199F08

Issue Date

2008

Keyword(s)

• Baseball
• Culture
• Sports
• Style
• Fashion
• KIN199F08

Abstract

I've reached a point in my life where I finally realized that my pitching career has most likely come to an end. However, I want to reflect on the past. I want to dig deeper into my life in the sport than just looking at the wins and losses. I want to see really how much culture affects the sport. This project is not only going to be an ethnography of the university's baseball team, but it will also be a self reflection piece on how my life was 100 percent baseball. By looking at the UIUC baseball team, past and current, I will analyze playing styles influenced by different cultures, athletes, coaches, and friends. I will do this via research and an attempt at an interview of players.

Series/Report Name or Number

• "KIN 199, Sport, Play, and Ethnography, Prof. Synthia Sydnor: This course, a First Year Discovery Program and part of Ethnography of the University Initiative (EUI), introduced students to cultural ethnographic method/theory and criticism related to the study of contemporary sport and play. This was accomplished by sampling both older ""classic"" works and recent significant projects in the area of study. Throughout the semester, students engaged in original primary research/fieldwork centered on ""something that matters"" that was ""somehow"" connected to sport and/or play within the University of Illinois community. The work of the semester was not so much to produce a final “polished” ethnography, but rather to reflect upon ongoing issues such as: What is my specific topic of interest? What are the key terms, questions, data, and significance of my unique project? What links can be made between my work and others ideas/ experiences? In what genres/forms can I communicate the above to others? The course syllabus is available at: http://www.eui.uiuc.edu/docs/syllabi/KIN199F08.pdf."
• "Instructor's overview of KIN 199, ""Sport, Play & Ethnography,"" Fall 2008 There were 17 freshmen in the Discovery/EUI course; all but two students were undeclared majors. I had two main objectives for the semester: First, I wanted to introduce students to cultural ethnographic method/theory and criticism related to the study of contemporary sport and play; in the course we were free and broad with definitions of both sport and play. To accomplish this first objective, we studied older “classic” works (such as Clifford Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” and the film, Trobriand Cricket: An Ingenious Response to Colonialism); recent significant projects in the area of study (such as Kyle Kusz, Revolt of the White Athlete: Race, Media and the Emergence of Extreme Athletes in America [2007] and the film, Wrestling with Manhood: Boys, Bullying and Battering [2003]); and method and theory ( such as David L. Andrews, Daniel S. Mason and Michael L. Silk, eds., Qualitative Methods in Sports Studies [2005]). Second, throughout the semester, students were engaged in original primary research/ fieldwork centered on discovering “something that matters” that is “somehow” connected to sport and/or play within our University of Illinois community; students were free to go in any direction with this and could form groups to complete their research (in the end, 5 groups of 2 students each submitted projects and the remainder were individual projects). Most of the students spent the whole semester trying to identify a topic that was fascinating and important to themselves, but that also “mattered” in a cultural studies sense and that impacted the university in some way (the final projects of the semester were not so much on final “polished” ethnographies, but rather upon ongoing reflection of EUI issues such as: “What is my specific topic of interest?” Why is my unique project important? “What are the key terms, questions, data, and significance of my unique project?” “What links can be made between my work and others ideas/experiences?” “In what genre/form can I communicate the above to others?”) Throughout the semester, I kept challenging the students to apply some of the critical work upon which we had concentrated in readings and screenings to their projects and to refine their topics so that they were unique and could somehow make a contribution to policies or practices of the university, reveal historical power struggles, etc., as the topics initially selected seemed naïve and uncritical to me. About half way through the semester, I contemplated assigning my own topics to groups, but ultimately agreed that students should proceed with their own journeys into selecting topics. I required students to present to the EUI student conference (25% of total grade) so the final four weeks of the semester were spent getting those presentations submitted and ready. Overall, I am satisfied with how the course went — these particular students – first semester freshman and very energetic – will always be special to me."

Type of Resource

text

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/11617

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