Myth Building and Cultural Politics in W. P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe
The mythic vision of America and its national pastime which W. P. Kinsella constructed in Shoeless Joe ([1982] 1991) has extended into millions of American imaginations, both in the form of the novel and its film adap- tation, Field of Dreams (1989).1 Kinsella built the myth, and people came to live it. Perhaps literary critic Neil Randall best articulates the popular response to Shoeless Joe when he calls it a "moral book" which "makes us come away in the end feeling 'pretty damn good about being alive for the rest of the day"' (1987, 181). But when we read beyond what Randall calls "fantasy and the humor of fellow-feeling," and explore the context of the novel's morality, an unsettling portrait of America emerges (1987, 173). In this essay, I will argue that Kinsella engenders a culturally conservative world, which reflects the historical circumstances of the 1980s and repro- duces the ideology of Ronald Reagan's presidency. By discussing the text within the framework of Reagan's America and the social ...
Re-Playing Playing for Keeps: A History of Early Baseball
I remember the moment vividly. It was 1979, and I’d come to have lunch with my closest adviser in graduate school so we could discuss the momentous subject of my doctoral dissertation. I had found an intriguing combination of sources—a payroll ledger from a New Haven lock factory as well as the diary of a young Irish worker in the same factory—and had already used them to write a pretty good seminar paper. Tentatively, I broached the idea that these might be the ingredients for a successful study of labor, community, and working-class consciousness. As we worked our way around the salad bar in the Silliman College dining hall at Yale, Richard Wightman Fox (now Professor of History at the University of Southern California) turned to me, plate in hand, and said, “There are dozens of studies like that already, and there’ll be plenty more. You should do something different—something you love. Why not write about baseball?” I stood there, stunned at this outrageous notion. What was he thinking? Baseball, we both knew, had only gotten in the way of my academic life. I once had to reschedule the lecture I was supposed to give as a teaching assistant in Richard’s class, because my (then) beloved Yankees had gotten into the playoffs, and I was running back and forth to Yankee Stadium, not getting home until the early morning hours. Another time, in a fit of ambition, I tried to write an essay review of some recent books about sports by academics but ended up too intimidated by the prospect of putting my unformed thoughts down on the page—as opposed to riffing at the ballpark, and the idea died. “Richard,” I finally managed to croak out, “you want me to commit professional suicide!” “No, no,” he protested. “It’ll be great!” I don’t remember any more about that lunch. I do remember the year I spent working on a prospectus, and my ill-fated hunt for an adviser. A famous political historian, who had advised my undergraduate senior essay, so disliked my draft prospectus that he marched down the hall into the American Studies office, slammed it down on the secretary’s desk, and declared to anyone within earshot that he refused to be associated with such a ridiculous project. My department convened a special meeting, named a committee and chairperson, and I was on my way. Sort of. I didn’t really know what shape the dissertation would take, only that it would be a social and cultural history of nineteenth-century baseball and include attention to play as work, and to the game as business, urban, and immigration history. The most perceptive criticism of my prospectus came from a fellow graduate student, Christopher Wilson, now at Boston College, who likened it to a magician putting swords through a basket: here’s the “labor history” sword, and now I shall insert the “immigrant” sword. The problem was that those intellectual swords had made my subject disappear.
Marxism and Educational Theory: Origins and Issues
Introduction 1. The Development of Marxist Theory 2. The Development of Postmodernist Theory 3. The Sociological Context: The Place of Marxism and Postmodernism in Educational Theory 4. Postmodernism, Marxism and Educational Theory: A Critical Analysis 5. Postmodernism, Marxism and Educational Practice: A Critical Analysis 6. Globalization, Marxism and the Future of Education Conclusion