English 3690 – Special Topics in Literature and Culture: Culture, Race, and Baseball (Spring 2016)
Professor: Raj Chetty
Office: St. John’s Hall, B40-7
Office Phone: (718) 990-2961
Email: chettyr@stjohns.edu
Course Texts
- Fences (August Wilson)
- Pafko at the Wall (Don DeLillo)
- Beyond a Boundary (C. L. R. James)
- Sugar (Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck film)
- Baseball and The Tenth Inning (Ken Burns documentaries)
Course Description
This course will introduce students to the influential and interdisciplinary field of cultural studies by engaging
some of the key critical writings on the concept of “culture” and situating these critical ideas in relation to a
very specific topic: baseball. The course presumes no interest in baseball or sport per se, but instead aims to
look at baseball as a cultural site, an important space where cultural issues like race and class are articulated and
contested. The course will include a 10-day trip to the Dominican Republic during the January inter-session.
One purpose for cultural studies is to engage with spaces that are typically seen as not sufficiently intellectual or
academic, not “cultivated” or “cultured” enough to warrant serious reflection or study. Cultural studies as a
discipline in the US and the UK emerged in the 1950s and 60s as a method to consider the political, economic,
and social implications of culture at large, and since then has branched into different approaches that can all
loosely fit under “cultural studies.” This class will engage different models of cultural studies, putting these
models to use in studying cultural materials ranging from novella to theater to film and visual culture. The
unifying theme across these different cultural materials is the relationship between baseball and race.
Learning Goals
• Students will enhance their critical reading and writing skills.
• Students will conduct literary research that is interdisciplinary (Cultural Studies and Sport Studies).
• Students will situate literary texts, films, and visual media in historical contexts and within cultural theory.
• Students will understand cultural meanings attached to baseball in a comparative, international context.
Course Outcomes
• Students will compose short and longer analytical essays, in both traditional and digital forms.
• Students will analyze texts, artifacts, and critical writings that enrich their awareness of the historical
backgrounds and conditions relevant for the study of literature, culture, baseball, and race.
• Students will conduct library research and use reference material in different media, digital and print.
• Students will understand some of the major critical and theoretical trends in Cultural Studies.
• Students will create effective online presentations of their work, through personal blogs.
Participation and Writings (also known as the basis for your grade)
This course is reading intensive, so engaging meaningfully with all readings is essential for success in the
course. To help your engagement be meaningful, you will have daily informal writings, weekly semi-formal
writings, and one formal critical paper (due at the end of the semester).
Participation and Informal Writings
Because reading and commenting on the work of your peers, discussing ideas, and engaging with the classroom
community are all important parts of this course, 25% of your grade comes from your level of participation in
the more informal activities for the course. Your participation grade will be determined by
o your respectful presence in class
o your willingness to contribute to class and small group discussion by making comments and
asking questions, and by allowing others to do the same
o your timely completion of reading and writing assignments, including online discussion boards
and other informal, semi-formal, and formal writings
o your engagement in group work and peer workshops
o your bringing the relevant course materials, including printouts of required e-reserve materials
o your conference about the last paper
Keep in mind that you cannot make up in-class activities; however, it would be wise to try to get course notes
from a peer on days you miss.
Most of the writing assignments mentioned in the list above are informal, meaning they will be evaluated based
on completion. Despite being graded only for completion, they represent an important place for you to explore
and discover your ideas, through writing about them. Some of these informal writing assignments will be
responses to specific prompts from me, while others will be more open; some will happen in class, others for
homework; some online, others individually written and brought to class for discussion. I will check completion
periodically and randomly, so keeping up with these assignments will ensure that you do well on the
participation part of your grade. More importantly, however, completing these informal writing assignments
will help you work through the concepts related to cultural studies, race, and baseball, in addition to helping you
generate ideas for your paper.
Semi-formal Writings
In addition to the informal writings, each Friday you will submit a 1-page, single-spaced response paper,
reflecting on the week’s readings. When there are numerous readings in a given week, your response may not
necessarily discuss all of the readings, focusing instead on those that intrigued you most. One of the purposes of
these semi-formal writings, however, is to process the content of the week’s various readings and to use writing
to think more deeply about the concepts, issues, or themes confronted across the readings.
These informal writings will be graded for completion and content, and as a whole make up 35% of your final
grade. The criteria for the grade will be how much thought and critical reflection you put into each response
paper. Thus, for these weekly papers, you should focus your responses on the ideas in the readings, and your
engagement with those ideas. You will submit these as online Word documents each week by the end of Friday.
Late submission of any semi-formal writing will affect your participation grade (see above). Failure to complete
more than 3 of these weekly responses will result in a 0.0 for this portion of your grade.
Formal Writing
Your final assignment for this course is a 5-7 page paper, worth 40% of the overall grade. Details about this
paper will be given later, but in brief, you will write a critical argument about baseball, race, and culture, based
on course readings, using a cultural artifact from the course or from outside the course. You will have
opportunities during the second half of the semester to discuss paper topics and ideas with me.
Late Work
All assignments are due as specified. Submitting assignments after they’re due will affect your participation
grade. If extenuating circumstances prevent you from turning in work on time (documented illness, family
emergency, etc.), please let me know in advance, if possible, and we will work something out.
Writing Resources
St. John’s Writing Centers and their resources are available for developing and revising your papers.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism, or academic dishonesty, is presenting someone else's ideas or writing as your own. In your writing
for this class, you are encouraged to refer to other people's thoughts and writing—as long as you cite them. For
resources on properly citing and otherwise avoiding plagiarism, see the Citing Sources Ethically and Avoiding
Plagiarism website. As a matter of policy, any student found to have plagiarized any piece of writing in this
class will be reported to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences for review.
Accommodations
Please let me know if you need accommodation of any sort. I can work with the Office of Student Life-Disabled
Student Services to provide what you require. I am very willing to take suggestions specific to this class to meet
your needs. This syllabus is available in large print, as are other class materials. More information may be found
at the Services for Students with Disabilities website.
Complaints
If you have any concerns about the course or me, please see me as soon as possible. If you are not comfortable
talking with me or are not satisfied with the response that you receive, you may contact the English Department
Chair, Dr. Steven Sicari, at sicaris@stjohns.edu or 718-990-6387. His office is in the department’s main office,
St. John Hall, Room B15.
Tentative English 3690 Calendar
Study Abroad reading schedule (January 10-18)
Assignments: Daily blog posts; Culminating blog essay
Day 1
Junot Díaz, “Otravida, Otravez”
Alejandro Gautreax, “El debut de Negro Prieto”
Day 2
Alan Klein, from Dominican Baseball: New Pride, Old Prejudice
Rob Ruck, from Raceball: How the Major Leagues Colonized the Black and Latin Game
Day 3
Amy Bass, “‘No Compromise with Slavery! No Union with Slaveholders,’ or ‘Who was the Last Team to
Integrate?’”
Burgos, from Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line
Day 4
Carmen Nanko-Fernández, “Elbows on the Table: The Complex Contexts of lo popular”
Plummer, “Baseball Scout Epy Guerrero Looks for Rough Diamonds Amid Hunger and Poverty”
Day 5
Trevor Martin, Jonathan Paley, Ross Finkel, Ballplayer/Pelotero (documentary)
Road to the Big Leages/Rumbo a las Grandes Ligas (documentary)
Day 6
Félix Germán film short, “Luis Pié”; Juan Bosch short story, Luis Pié”
WNYC with Brian Lehrer, “Citizenship in the Dominican Republic”
Jorge Arangure, “Out at Home”
Semester Reading Schedule (Spring 2016)
See syllabus for assignments
Unit 1
Matthew Arnold, from Culture and Anarchy
Raymond Williams, “Culture,” “Culture is Ordinary”
Stuart Hall, “The Emergence of Cultural Studies and the Crisis in the Humanities,” “Cultural Studies and its
Theoretical Legacies”
Richard E. Lee, from Life and Times of Cultural Studies
Simon During, from Cultural Studies: A Critical Introduction
Tony Bennett, “Culture”
Unit 2
Entries from Keywords for American Cultural Studies
Gail Lewis, “Racializing Culture is Ordinary”
W.E.B. Du Bois, from The Souls of Black Folk
Houston Baker, et al, “Representing Blackness/Representing Britain”
Stuart Hall, “New Ethnicities,” “What is This Black in Black Popular Culture?”
Unit 3
Toby Miller, “Competing Allegories: An Introduction,” “Sport, Authenticity, Confession”
Ben Carrington and Ian MacDonald, ed., from Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport
Amy Bass, from Not the Triumph But the Struggle: The 1968 Olympics and the Making of the Black Athlete
Ben Carrington, from Race, Sport, and Politics
Rob Ruck and Alex Ruck, “The Negro Leagues and the Contradictions of Social Darwinism”
Unit 4
C. L. R. James, Beyond a Boundary
Unit 5
August Wilson, Fences
Unit 6
Don Delillo, “Pafko at the Wall”
Unit 7
Ken Burns, Baseball (documentary)
Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, Baseball: The Tenth Inning
Unit 8
Mark Kurlansky, from The Eastern Stars
Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, Sugar (film)
Adrian Burgos, "Left-out: Afro-latinos, Baseball, and the Revision of Baseball History"
Unit 9
Ginetta Candelario, from Black Behind the Ears: Dominican Racial Identity from Museums to Beauty Shops
David Howard, from Coloring the Nation: Race and Ethnicity in the Dominican Republic
Ernesto Sagas, from Race and Politics in the Dominican Republic
Silvio Torres-Saillant, "Blackness and Meaning in Studying Hispaniola: A Review Essay”
New York State Education Department Requirements
- Hours of Instruction: 52 hours (10 hours during study abroad; 42 hours during semester)
- Supplementary hours:
- 10 hours (orientation, site visits, and service learning while studying abroad)
- 10 hours (readings and blog assignments)
- 56 hours (reading load during semester)
- 20 hours (writing and researching load during semester)
Total hours: 148 hours