AMSTUD 147A:
Speaking of Baseball (ENGLISH 147A)
Since its invention in the nineteenth century, baseball has been steeped in lore and rhetoric. A cultural commentator recently pegged it one of three significant American contributions to world culture, along with jazz and the U.S. constitution. Literary and artistic representations of baseball abound, often treating it as more than a game and only a little less than a religion. In this class, we¹ll track representations and grand claims made for baseball by American poets, novelists, and commentators of all sorts. We'll weigh the cornucopia of literary nonfiction depicting the game. The goal will be to map the scope of this literature, defining a tradition's edges, determining its peaks, assessing its limits, challenges, and stakes. This class is open to anyone, whether familiar with the game, or totally new to it. We'll cover a variety of issues: Americana, mythologies of sport, gender and class, race, history, sociology, lots of poetry, and film.
Terms: Sum
| Units: 3-5