A Cheer for Sports-Based Research Topics

smccormack
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Students in my introductory-level US History since 1877 class are currently engaged in research projects based on randomly assigned photographs from the period 1890 to 1970. Images range from Japanese “picture brides,” to actors James Dean and Clara Bow, to migrant workers in the era of the Dust Bowl. The topics that students are most excited about, however, are those of sports figures from the time period.

 

Biographical study of sports figures can be a fun way to engage early-career students in academic research. Since people’s lives have definitive start/end dates biographical study feels manageable to students from the project’s onset. Once they have identified the time period in which the subject lived they can align the person’s life with historical events, forging an understanding of historical context and significance. A student studying Satchel Paige (1906-1982), for example, researches not only Paige’s personal story but also race relations and the history of professional baseball.

 

Here is a list of sports-related topics from my current students’ projects. No doubt there are many more possibilities -- and lots of famous athletes not on this list. Suggestions of great sports/history research topics for first-year students? Please share below:

 

Roberto Clemente

Althea Gibson

Jack Johnson

Satchel Paige

Wilma Rudolph

Marshall “Major” Taylor 

Jim Thorpe

Carlisle Indian School basketball team

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About the Author
Suzanne K. McCormack, PhD, is Professor of History at the Community College of Rhode Island where she teaches US History, Black History and Women's History. She received her BA from Wheaton College (Massachusetts), and her MA and PhD from Boston College. She is currently at work on a study of the treatment of women with mental illness in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Massachusetts and Rhode Island.