Workshop 1 Booklet

1 Sports Africa 2017 WORKSHOP 1, “TEACHING AFRICAN SPORTS” VENUE: EDU 12, NEW EDUCATION BUILDING University of the Free State, Bloemfontein 10th April 2017 at 15h30 Dr Todd Cleveland 2 Sports Africa 2017, Workshop 1, “Teaching African Sports” Agenda for discussion: - Sport as part of classes that also consider leisure and recreation - Integrating (African) Sports History in World History courses, Global History, Cold War History, etc. - Locating accessible source materials – for student research and class assignments - The legitimacy in the academy of sports-related classes - attractive to students and, thus, “seat fillers,” but not taken seriously by some scholars - Sport as part of classes that consider development - Preparing students via coursework to work in the sports industry - Sport pedagogy and Physical Education - Sports methodology and biography writing - Learning Outcomes and Assessment – how to set learning outcomes and assess students’ knowledge/performance - Ethnological research of African athletes by students - Sports coursework and social justice - How to make African sports appealing to those who have little social, cultural, or historical understanding of Africa. 3 Sports Africa 2017, Workshop 1, “Teaching African Sports” Original Announcement: A small, but growing, group of scholars has been struggling, though increasingly successfully, for some time to legitimize the study of sports in the academy. Yet, even if research on sports-related topics has gained traction and publishers have been increasingly receptive, introducing this work into the classroom remains a significant challenge. In many ways, the classroom remains the final frontier for this subject. Indeed, although numerous scholars currently conduct research on an array of sports topics, there are far fewer who offer sports-themed classes at their respective institutions. And even fewer that focus on Africa. Although there exist a growing number of sports-themed classes that include Africa, including all manner of "World Football" courses, these typically offer minimal or peripheral coverage of Africa. Towards more fully incorporating African sports in the classroom, the organizers of the upcoming “Sports Africa” conference (http://sportinafrica.org/), to be held April 10-13 at the University of the Free State, in Bloemfontein, South Africa, have organized a workshop that aims to explore the various ways that sports in Africa are employed in the classroom - either as standalone classes or as part of broader, more topically- varied courses – the pedagogical strategies and approaches that instructors are employing, and challenges to further incorporation. As an outgrowth of these efforts, the workshop also seeks to examine how we can engage our students in meaningful research endeavors on topics related to sports in Africa. The workshop will provide a forum in which scholars who are actively teaching African Sports in the classroom can exchange ideas, approaches, and experiences. To maximize this session, participants will be encouraged to pre- circulate relevant syllabi as well as (brief) pedagogical essays based on their experiences, with the workshop providing an opportunity for fruitful, face-to-face exchange flowing out of these pieces, with the ultimate aim of growing the presence of African Sports in the classroom. 4 Pedagogical Essay: “Teaching African Sports” Teaching African Sports in a World History Context: Global and Local Approaches Mauricio Borrero (St. John’s University, USA) The pedagogical potential of African sports reaches far beyond African history practitioners to include those teaching courses in world history. This proposal builds on recent experiences integrating sports history into world history surveys and developing undergraduate and graduate sports history courses. I will emphasize three promising avenues for integrating African sports narratives and world history narratives: biographical, geopolitical, and local. The biographical approach comes from tweaking a long-standing department course “Personalities in History,” to be taught in 2018. I will put a world history focus on individual athletes, male and female, whose lives can help students better grasp the issues of gender, class, race, ethnicity, and identity that are central to the broader study of sports history. But, this need not be a “great athlete” version of older “great man” approaches to history. Teams such as the South Africa’s rugby Springboks or numerous African football clubs have extensive collective identities meriting classroom attention. The geopolitical approach builds on recently-taught senior seminars in Cold War history and my participation in Wilson Center’s “Sport in the Cold War” project. I also draw on my research for a biography of Lev Yashin, the legendary Soviet football goalkeeper, as well as on numerous examples of sports exchanges between the Soviet bloc and African nations in the 1950s and 1960s. The local approach comes from my work at a New York City-based university with a brand-new Ph.D. program in World History and an M.A. program in Public History, which encourage work with local resources. I wish to take advantage of the rich New York resources available to students of African sports topics, including the Dennis Brutus papers at the NYPL, the New York City marathon, or the experiences of African football players in local MLS and NASL clubs. Pedagogical Essay: “Teaching African Sports” 5 Teaching Global Sports History and Politics Derek C. Catsam (University of Texas of the Permian Basin, USA) Sports history courses tend to inspire ambivalence in many departments. On the one hand they provide a service element because they almost always fit the category of "rear-ends in seats" -- courses that draw large numbers of students for reasons ranging from a serious interest in the topic to a belief that such courses will be both fun and easy. But at the same time there are those who find such courses not to be serious, to be opportunities for professors to exercise their hobbies. Yet serious sports history courses can raise serious issues -- about race and gender, about economic questions, about colonialism and global politics. I teach two sports history and politics classes -- one centered around American sports and society, the other about global sport and politics. In each case sport provides a lens through which to examine larger social issues. In these classes it surely is helpful to know about sports, to follow the games on the field. But what is far more important is to be able to draw out larger implications of, say, the India-Pakistan cricket rivalry, or why everyone always wants to beat England in anything, or the role that sport played in the anti-apartheid struggle. As someone who writes about race and politics in southern Africa, African sport plays a significant role in my teaching and scholarship and is front-and-center in the Global Sport and Politics course. 6 Syllabus 1: “Teaching African Sports” MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY SPORT, RACE AND POWER IN SOUTH AFRICA History 484 | Fall 2015 |T-Th 2:40-4pm |112A Berkey Hall |Prof. Peter Alegi Course Description This seminar uses both conventional and digital methods and sources to explore sport and social change in South Africa from the late nineteenth century to the present. The emphasis is on the history of rugby, cricket, and soccer, but we will also cover pre-colonial games, track and field, and golf. We’ll examine the sporting lives of South African athletes, fans, reporters, coaches, and organizers and then connect them to shifting racial identities and power relationships. This complex and fascinating history will shed light on the pivotal role of sport in the everyday lives of black, brown, and white South Africans, in the struggle against apartheid, and in nation-building efforts after 1994. The main intellectual goal is to use race, class, gender, and nationalism to deepen our understanding of South Africa’s remarkable transformation from pariah of international sport to global citizen and World Cup host. On a more practical level, the course will strengthen skills of critical thinking, digital scholarship, oral communication, collaboration, research, and writing. Seminar website: http://history.msu.edu/hst484-f15/ Required Course Books Peter Alegi, Laduma! Soccer, Politics, and Society in South Africa (2010 edition) Peter Alegi and Chris Bolsmann, eds., Africa’s World Cup Marvin Close and Chuck Korr, More Than Just a Game: Soccer vs. Apartheid Christopher Nicholson, Papwa: From Pariah to Legend Peter Oborne, Basil D’Oliveira: Cricket and Conspiracy Additional readings are available on the course website. Note: Africa’s World Cup is also available as a free e-book via the MSU Library [link]. Course Requirements and Assessment Participation This course is a reading and discussion seminar. Attendance is required. Students are expected to read the assigned material before class and come ready to participate. Only two absences are permitted. Any additional absences (other than a documented emergency) will adversely affect your final grade. Participation grades will be based on your performance as discussion leader (see below), the quality of responsiveness, and on these two criteria: how much have you contributed to make the class interesting? How much have you done to further your classmates’ understanding of the material? You can earn a high participation grade quite easily through comments, questions, and 7 challenges. Finally, each week, on rotation, one

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