SOCIOLOGY 647: SOCIOLOGY OF SPORT

Summer, 2009

CLASS MEETS: Five weeks, May 26-June 25. Detailed achedule: May 26 - May 28. TWR; Jun 1 - June 18, MTWR; June 23-June 25, TWR 10:20-12:30; 6116 Social Science Building.

REQUIRED TEXTS: (available at University Bookstore)

• D. Stanley Eitzen and George H. Sage, Sociology of North American Sport, 8th edition, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2009
• D. Stanley Eitzen, Ed., Sport in Contemporary Society: An Anthology, 7th edition, New York: Worth Publishers, 2005

There will be a few additional readings on electronic reserve or the internet.

REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING:

100% attendance is required during the times class is meeting. There are only 18 meetings of the class, so missing one class is almost like missing a week in a normal semester of 14 weeks.

There will be no examinations in this class. The requirements are as follows:

• Class attendance and participation, including evaluations of panel presentations and final student lectures, if any — 10% of grade
  
• Book or movie review of 3 pages, due Tuesday of week 2 -- 15% of grade.
  
• Panel presentation in week 2 or 3, and 4 page position paper based on it due Tuesday of week 4— 25% of grade
  
• Take-home quizzes on readings — 15% of grade. Weeks one through four.
  
• Research paper – 6 - 8 pages – (or lecture of 30-40 minutes) asking and trying to answer a sociological question related to sport. Due June 30, Monday after last week of class – 35% of grade.
  

All of the papers will be submitted in electronic form to http://www.turnitin.com, where they can be checked for plagiarism. This is to protect both students and professor from unnecessary unpleasantness. Please see this document from the writing lab to refresh your memory about proper citation.

BOOK OR MOVIE REVIEW:

During the first week of class, you will select a novel, autobiography, or film (fictional or documentary) available on video or DVD or currently in theaters. A list will be provided, but you can suggest one not on the list. You will do a 3 page review, consisting of one page in which you describe the contents of the book or film, followed by 2 pages in which you critique it and point out and discuss sociological issues raised in it. This is due Monday, June 1. Click here for Sports Illustrated's 50 best films. See instructions.

PANEL POSITION PAPER:

Each person will be required to participate in a panel discussion and to prepare a short (4 page) paper dealing with one of six panel topics. You will be asked in the first week of class to rank order eight topics in terms of your interest in them and state your preferred side (pro or con). I will do magic with these ratings and let you know by the Friday of that week which panel topics we will use and which one you are assigned to. Panels will take place in weeks 3 and 4. Regardless of when you do your presentation, the paper is due on Wednesday, June 17. See instructions.

Click here for panel list.

QUIZZES:

Take-home quizzes covering the readings assigned for the current and following week will be given out each Thursday in weeks one through four. They are to be handed in on Tuesday of the next week (2-5). Some questions may ask you to compare something covered in one week's readings with something dealt with earlier. They will be mainly short answer and short essay, with some True-False or multiple-guess. There will be no trick questions, and all answers will be found in the readings. The purpose for this homework is -- in the absence of exams -- to assure that class members have done the reading, allowing us to have intelligent discussions of their content.

FINAL PAPER OR PRESENTATION:

This project may be an outgrowth of sociological issues raised in your book or film review, but could be on some other sociological topic. You will meet with me in week two regarding your ideas before embarking on your project; there are three options for meeting this requirement:

• You can do an observation of some sport, either as a participant, a coach, or a spectator. This involves taking "field notes", drawing conclusions from those notes, developing hypotheses, and, when possible, testing them with later observations. This project will also involve doing qualitative interviews with participants. You will turn in a thesis statement and a brief description of your proposed data collection methodology on Tuesday of week 3. Field notes will be turned in once a week in weeks 3 and 4. The project will also involve some library research dealing with the ideas you develop in the course of your observations. The final product is a 6-8 page paper.

• You can write a 6-8 page library research paper on your topic. You will need to turn in a thesis statement and a list of book and journal references in week three, and an outline and an expanded reference list in week four. You may also use internet sources, interviews with relevant individuals, or other information.


• You can prepare a 30-40 minute lecture to be given in week 5. This lecture should involve some use of media as visual aids. As with option two, I will want a thesis statement and a list of references in week three, and an outline and an expanded reference list in week four. The lecture cannot rely on materials assigned for the course. The final product is your lecture, but also a "script" (or a detailed outline), with copies of your visual materials or the powerpoint slides, if you use that technique, as well as your reference list.

Graduate students (and honors students) are urged to take advantage of the opportunity to present a lecture; however they are free to choose any of the projects. A longer, more "professional" paper or lecture will be expected. If not very many people choose to do lectures, we will use the last two days of week five for brief presentations of the findings of your observational or library research papers. Papers are due on Monday, June 29, but will be accepted earlier.

The outline of topics, readings, videos, and guest speakers below is tentative. More interesting issues may come up, leading us to change the order of topics, omit some, or add others. I like to keep an open mind.

TOPICS OF THE COURSE AND READINGS:

E&S = Eitzen & Sage, text
E = Eitzen, book of readings

** Final papers are due Monday, June 29**

Possible panel topics for weeks 2, 3, and 4:

• Because of the danger to athletes and excessive corruption in promotions, professional boxing should be outlawed.
• Schools and colleges should give as much emphasis and financial support to sports for girls and women as for boys and men — even if, because of budgetary constraints, this makes it necessary to cut back on the boys' and men's programs.
• Big time college sports is a commercial entertainment enterprise and has no legitimate place on a college campus.
• Because of the intrusion of politics and personal favoritism in judging such events as gymnastics, figure skating, and diving, the Olympic games should consist only of sports whose outcomes can be decided objectively, by times, distances, goals, and points.
• College players in the revenue sports at Division 1-A schools are essentially professionals, like minor league baseball players, and should receive salaries.
• At public universities, organized team prayer before and after games violates the separation of church and state and should not be allowed, although private prayer and devotionals are permissible.
• "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing": Vince Lombardi.
• Organized youth sports programs like Little League Baseball or youth soccer represent an unwise intrusion of adults into the play activities of children.

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Questions? Comments? Please contact jpiliavi@ssc.wisc.edu

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