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• S11. Jackie Robinson, Boston and the Integration of Baseball

  • Start
    06/06/2024
  •  
  • End
    07/11/2024
  •  
  • Schedule
    5 sessions
  • Location
    Zoom only

  Register

  This course meets 5 times.
  

  In 1947, Jackie Robinson, with the Brooklyn Dodgers, was the first player to break the “color line” in Major League Baseball. This historic event could have taken place in Boston, but the Red Sox lost that chance. In fact, they were the last team to have a black player when they brought up Pumpsie Green in 1959. Ever since then, there have been lingering questions about the racial policies of the team and its owner, Thomas A. Yawkey. These questions have been raised by baseball fans and by professional ball players who have expressed a reluctance to play in Boston. In February 2018, the Red Sox petitioned Boston to change the name of Yawkey Way back to its original name of Jersey Street. This course examines the events surrounding Robinson's Boston tryout and examines racial attitudes of the team and its owner, Thomas Yawkey.

  Optional readings:

  • 1.     Pumpsie and Progress: The Red Sox, Race, and Redemption, by Bill Nowlin (Rounder Books May 25, 2010) 978-1579401757

    
    2.     Red Sox Century: One Hundred Years of Red Sox Baseball  by Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt January 1, 2000) ‎ 978-0395884171

  

  David Nevard attended UMass Amherst and spent 35 years in information technology for a large corporation. From 1985 through 2002, he was editor of a baseball newsletter called A Red Sox Journal, published by the Buffalo Head Society. The newsletter is now in the collection of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.  This course combines his interests in baseball and history. 

  Since retirement, David has been an instructor at WISE and other area lifelong learning programs. David previously led the course called “Europe’s Lost and Found: Displaced Persons after World War II.”  Other History courses he has done for WISE include "Suburbia", "Berlin Wall", "Worcester Tornado", "Operation Paperclip", and "Nuremberg War Crimes Trial".  

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• S16. Conservation in the American West

  • Start
    06/14/2024
  •  
  • End
    07/12/2024
  •  
  • Schedule
    5 sessions
  • Location
    Zoom only

  Register

  This course meets 5 times.
  

  This overview course of conservation in the American West will use case studies to explore the social, political, and ecological problems that accompany wildlife and wildland management in and around some of the country’s most iconic landscapes. The course will consider the history of American conservation, the roles of science, values, and profit in decision-making, and the way that controversies and conflicts over wildlife and public lands in the 1990s and early 2000s presaged and predicted the rise of militia movements and right-wing politics. The class will look ahead to the future of conservation work in an era of climate change and governance challenges.

  We will look closely at three species whose conservation trajectories highlight major themes, triumphs, and challenges in conservation – wolves, sage grouse, and wolverines. We will also consider evolving social and scientific technologies for better understanding and managing the environment, including AI, remote sensing and DNA, Indigenous Science, and other old and new approaches to the complex question of human/nature relationships.

  Optional readings:

  1.  True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America by Betsy Gaines Quammen (Torrey House Press, 2023)

  2.     American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God, and Public Lands in the West by Betsy Gaines Quammen (Torrey House Press, 2020)

  3.  Yellowstone Wolves by Doug Smith, Daniel Stahler, and Daniel  McNulty, editors, (University of Chicago Press, 2020)

  

  Rebecca Watters is a wildlife researcher who has worked on wolves, wolverines, and social perceptions of wildlife in Mongolia and the Western US for the past two decades. She lives in Bozeman, Montana.

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• S12. The Creeping Professionalism of Major College Sports

  • Start
    06/20/2024
  •  
  • End
    07/11/2024
  •  
  • Schedule
    3 sessions
  • Location
    Zoom only

  Register

  This course meets 3 times.

  For many years, avid college sports fans have lamented the evolving shape of big-time football and basketball, driven by the insatiable quest for billions of dollars of television revenue. But over the past few years, several major changes threaten to convert big-time college sports into a near professional model and in the process destroy many of its unique traditions. Waves of athletic conference realignment and consolidation (driven by dollars) have eliminated traditional regional rivalries, and virtually eliminated the PAC-12 Conference. The college football playoff is expanding. NIL (name, image, likeness) payments are funneled legally to players through booster networks --some can earn more in college than they will in the pros. Liberal transfer rules now allow players to freely move among colleges and cut favorable NIL deals. The notion of a “student-athlete” remaining at a college for four years has become archaic. Unionization of college sports is on the horizon. And the NCAA has failed as a regulatory body. This course will examine these issues and ask the question: will the overseers of big-time college sports ultimately kill the goose that laid the golden egg? 

  

  John S. Ross, III (Jack) holds degrees from Yale University and the University of Virginia School of Law, and practiced law for 20 years in Washington, D.C. He served as Adjunct Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law, and has taught numerous courses on constitutional law and other topics in the WISE program. Jack also facilitates the WISE Supreme Court Special Interest Group.

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• S2-Session 5. Fascinating History: The History of Toys

  • When
    07/01/2024
  •  
    1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
  • Location
    In Person - Kennedy 119 at Assumption University
  • Spaces left
    49

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  This topic of this course meets 1 time. 

  The History of Toys  From Ancient Egypt to modern animatronics, the history of toys is a wonderful insight into how we choose to entertain and instruct not just our children, but ourselves. From the wire helix wave demonstrator to caltrops to the European garotte, toys have a fabulous history. Come hear the awe inspiring story of the burden on the family and the useless nephew.   This comes with over 60 vintage toys and covers three thousand years of creative play.

  

  Sari Bitticks has served as president of the Auburn Historical Society and Museum for the past 12 years. She has researched and presented over 70 talks on various subjects for the Society and for area schools, senior centers, and other organizations.

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• S13. The Long War for Women’s Basketball

  • When
    07/11/2024
  •  
    10:30 AM - 12:30 PM
  • Location
    Zoom only

  Register

  This course meets 1 time. 

  Women have been playing basketball just as long as men. In the early years of the sport before WWI, women's basketball was often more popular than men's. But the women's game was hobbled by a series of rules to prevent the "weaker sex" from over-exerting themselves. No running. No defense. No competitive tournaments. Interest waned. 

  As women began to assert their rights leading up to suffrage in 1920, women's hoops suffered a new line of attack: that the players were unattractive and "unladylike"; that they were uppity women's suffrage types; and finally, that they were "muscle molls" - dykes. That last campaign was led by Pres. Hoover's first lady, Lou Henry Hoover. It was effective: girls basketball disappeared from high schools across the country. Women's college hoops followed suit. 

  And the situation didn't begin to turn around until Title IX was passed, in 1972. Even then, the resistance continued. This year - 50 years after Title IX – the Women's NCAA championships drew more viewers than the Men's, and the biggest name in basketball is Caitlin Clark. The WNBA is poised to become the first financially successful women’s professional team sport. More than half the League has come out as proudly lesbian. 

  This is the story behind that century long battle for freedom and respect. It tracks the social history of women and the ongoing construction of gender in the 20 th  century.

  

  Rick Hendra is a long-time bball player, coach, and rec league exec (now retired). He has previously taught "Basketball: A Social History", a Spotlight Special on "Singing Sisters: The Rise of the Female Vocal Groups", and other blues and gospel related courses, always with a social justice slant. He edits the WISE Guide & Bulletin, and in previous lives taught at UMass, managed the co-and extra-curricula at Quinsig CC, and DJ’d at Community Radio WCUW.

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