This course is designed to engage students in conversations about particular perspectives on the history of a selected nation, region, people, culture, institution, or historical phenomenon as specified by the respective instructor. By taking this course, students will come to understand, and develop an appreciation for, some combination of: the origins and evolution of the people, cultures, and/or political, economic, and/or social institutions of a particular region(s) of the world. They may also explore how human encounters shaped individual and collective identities and the complex political, economic, and social orders of the region/nation/communities under study. Instructors and subject will vary.

The spectator sport of baseball is routinely celebrated by poets, novelists, and cultural commentators as both a unique and peculiarly American pastime. But it is also a global entertainment enterprise that epitomizes many things about capitalist society, leisure culture, and mass entertainment in the modern world. This course is designed to explore baseball over time and across, for both students who love the sport and those who are mystified by its appeal. Lectures focus on the way baseball has acquired cultural meaning in the various settings where it has thrived as a spectator sport, both in the United States and in other nations, since the middle of the nineteenth century. We will pay special attention to baseball’s place in larger developments in the history of urban space, gender, media, labor, statistics, racial inequality, international relations, and U.S. empire. Requirements include regular attendance at lectures, timely completion of reading assignments, an in-class mid-term examination, a short (500–600 words) analysis of primary source documents, a longer (800–900 words) analysis of a pair of novels, and a final examination.

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Requirements class fulfills