Comments on: History 1L The History of Play and Leisure, Spring 2008

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 20:07:23 +0000

I was originally going to focus that week around Beyond a Boundary, which I love, but it’s precisely because it’s so difficult to grasp if you don’t know cricket a bit that I shifted to Friday Night Lights (which I also love). But hopefully showing at least some of Langaan that week will help a bit.

By: domurphy

domurphy — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:45:51 +0000

How do the students do with “Beyond a Boundary”? Isn’t it incomprehensible for them? And do you know Ramachandra Guha’s “Corner of a Foreign Field’? It’s about religion, cricket and Indian nationalism in Bombay/Mumbai, where there used to be an annual tournament between Hindus, Muslims and Europeans. (It has much less cricket jargon than the James.)

By: k8

k8 — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 20:40:51 +0000

I would LOVE to take this class. From what you’ve said, I agree with the skills development through writing. They are very appropriate for your course and discipline. I think that is where some people get in trouble – they don’t think about the discrete skills that students need within a particular discourse community and, as a result, don’t scaffold instruction in ways that are beneficial to students.

You are taking a very rhetorical approach, which, as a comp-rhet person, I like! And it seems like you will have plenty of opportunities to show students how arguments in history work through the readings you’ve chosen. While writing a lot is important, that writing needs to be towards some sort of end or purpose, which definitely seems to be the case here.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:19:22 +0000

I think about that issue a lot. I think it only works well when there’s a very tight topical focus like in this class, and when I’ve set up the grounds for comparative arguments consistently throughout the semester. E.g., what I’m trying to do, most crucially in the class on Feb. 21st (on industrial time and leisure) is to propose that there’s a structural history around leisure that then propagates across the world. So then what the Africa or China or other readings are doing is asking how that develops or inflects differently in different locations. The best way to pull that off is when I can get something that’s closely paralleling (like the Akeayampong and Gorn pieces on boxing).

But it’s still a struggle to make it work well. I’ve felt happiest about the Africa material in my course on the history of reading. In the consumption class, it’s actually harder to make it work out really well, because relating it to globalization is such a huge and unmanageable topic in its own right.

By: jpool

jpool — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:13:36 +0000

A side point I’ve been meaning to ask you about:
How do you find your students respond to material from African history dropped into a course not specifically about Africa? Do they have the tools/background to make sense of it? Do they tend to treat it as a meaningful part of human history, or as a tangent to a central Western line? I worry about these things as I’m sketching out sample syllabi for non-Western history courses.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 11:44:52 +0000

I like the MacCannel too. Maybe I should try to work it in. Though to some extent, it raises a set of questions about tourism that almost belong best in another kind of framing or course. I’ve just gotten a copy of “Unbearable Whiteness” to look at and when I steal a moment to read it, I may decide to shoehorn it in to the already crowded hobbies and vacations meeting.

Yeah, with skills building, this has long been my modest disagreement with the view here that writing courses are primarily distinguished by the volume of writing and the amount of revision that goes on. I really want to break down skills into smaller components that are highly customized to what students here are going to be called upon to do.

By: Western Dave

Western Dave — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 04:57:14 +0000

Dean MacCannel’s Empty Meeting Grounds: The Tourist Papers didn’t make the cut? Some great selections there. A very good piece on eco/cultural tourism in New Guinea that has some Germans with a video camera trying to induce acts of cannibalism so they can take home an “authentic” film. Alas, the Unbearable Whiteness of Skiing” did not make the cut.

I love the skills emphasis and the way course makes it clear that these are what you are supposed to be working on. That’s a big shift since the 80s when I took my Freshman seminar, and even different from a few years ago when the sole purpose seemed to be “write as much as possible” without necessarily much other skills focus. (He said guiltily looking at the “Crossing Rivers and Oceans” syllabus he crafted and taught).

By: William Benzon

William Benzon — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:43:53 +0000

That is to say, the muggles of this world are still tied to that clock.

BTW, did you know that “muggles” happens to be old New Orleans slang for marijuna? & that Louis Armstrong wrote a blues called “Muggles,” which he dearly loved as he smoked it nearly every day of his adult life. So they say.

By: William Benzon

William Benzon — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:42:11 +0000

My sense, Tim, is that from the dawn of “civilization” (agriculture and walled cities, etc.) on into the early Industrial Revolution, the benefits of economic advance accrued mostly to the ruling classes and they’re the ones who were most able to enjoy leisure. The peasants, serfs, laborers, etc. had to spend too much time in back-breaking physical labor to benefit from what little leisure time they had. But once industrial labor got organized and cut back the work week of six 12-hour days, then they got some leisure time and were even in sufficiently good health to enjoy it.

As for the commodification of time, that’s gone on the dance floor, in the theatre, the sports field, in the amusement park and when you’re on vacation. Or, it’s gone if you’ve learned how to shut down the tick-tock industrial clock, for not everyone learns how to do that.

By: Kieran

Kieran — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:18:35 +0000

from a conservative or free-market standpoint, leisure time is arguably one of the great achievements of the Industrial Revolution. (Thereâ€s a counterargument that all that industrial capitalism did was attach a precise commodity value to time, etc., but the point is that itâ€s an argument.) E.P. Thompson's "Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism" and all that.