History 208 | Sports in World History | Project Guidelines
This semester we will encounter a number of themes: the tensions between
sports as exclusionary and sports as a vehicle for opportunity and social
progress; the need to define sports as political; the impact of sports on
communities, both positive and negative; the significance of rules,
regulations, and quantification in modern sports; and the links between sports
and big money. The purpose of this assignment, which will serve as the
capstone to this course, is to get you to build on these themes, in order to
see how you might apply the content of the class to your lives and interests
here at UM.
Because of the unique circumstances of the term, I propose the following.
Either as an individual or in small groups, you will select and listen to at
least ten of the Behee oral histories of black athletes at UM, which were
completed in 1970 (you can access them here: https://bentley.umich.edu/news-
events/news/beyond-the-field-2/ ). Using those interviews, you will produce a
project or paper—the equivalent of 8-10 pages in length for an individual
project, or 6-7 pages per member for a group project—that addresses some, but
not necessarily all, of the following questions:
How do the interviews of black student athletes at UM shed light on the
relationship between sports and political activism? How do these athletes
think about themselves as students, athletes, and political actors? How do
their experiences contribute to our understanding of race relations in Ann
Arbor and responses to the Black Action Movement of the late 1960s and early
1970s (you’ll find an overview of BAM here: https://www.lib.umich.edu/online-
exhibits/exhibits/show/history-of-race-at-um/diversity-in-student-
life/activism ) Do these student athletes think there’s an obligation for
athletes to engage in political action? Do you? Are the values of
amateurism—a concept that has its roots in the late nineteenth century—still
useful today? Is there such a thing as a student athlete?
Note: All projects must be argumentative, not simply fact-driven, and include
a thesis statement.
–You may also choose to supplement the interviews above with research from
the online collections from the Michigan Daily
(https://digital.bentley.umich.edu/midaily ); I’m posting a chapter of Martha
Biondi’s The Black Revolution on Campus (“Moving toward Blackness: The Rise
of Black Power on Campus”) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012),
which will provide background on Black student activism in the 1970s in the
US. You’ll find that posted in Files
Last Completed Projects
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