Degrees

Ph.D., University of Minnesota (1961)
M.A., Columbia University (1956)
B.A., University of Florida (1953)
Ph.D., (honorary), Universiteit Leuven (2005)
A.M. (honorary), Amherst College (1971)

Teaching Interests

Although I now teach a course entitled "Sport and Society" and another entitled "The Nazi Olympics," most of my courses are about American literature in historical context. For decades I've taught a course on the classic nineteenth-century writers: Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson. More recently, I've taught "Americans in Paris," a course that includes music (Virgil Thomson, Sidney Bechet), painting (Gerald Murphy), and photography (Man Ray) as well as literature (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Claude McKay, James Baldwin, etc.). I also teach American Studies 11 and 12, interdisciplinary courses whose focus changes every two years.

Selected Publications

My work has been discussed in a number of published books and essays and online in a set of four essays published in a special issue of Journal of Sport History

In addition to the books mentioned above, I've done histories of American sports, of the Olympic Games, and of the diffusion of modern sports from England and America to the entire world. (Was it or wasn't it cultural imperialism?)

Awards and Honors

My books have won prizes from the North American Society for Sports History (twice), the International Society for the History of Sport, the U.S. Olympic Committee, and the International Olympic Committee. I received an honoree degree from the Universiteit Leuven, founded in 1525.

Scholarly and Professional Activities

In additional to having served as president of the North American Society for Sport History, I've done my stint as a member of the editorial board of a number of American, British, French, and German journals dedicated to sports history or sports sociology. I've also paid my professional dues by translating one book from English into German and three from German into English.

See also: Research Interests