Boxing in America

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

In this course, we will explore the history of boxing in the United States and learn a great deal about the craft of boxing—what the writers Pierce Egan and A.J. Liebling have called “the sweet science”—as well as the craft of writing and thinking. The course will chart the story of boxing in America from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. It will start in England, move to places like nineteenth-century New York, where boxing was transformed from a gambling pursuit among the working class into a mass spectator sport, examine the time when boxing became ascendant in America, and end in the late twentieth century when boxing was entangled with transformations to American cities and with changing race politics. The story of boxing is the story of America. The class will look at the rise of cities, global trade, labor, mass migration, changing understandings of gender, race, and class, and the highs and lows of American culture. In other words, this is not a sports history class. We will also learn about the finer points of boxing, how fighting changed over time, and how technique developed. By doing all this, students will come to appreciate the inner workings of a dynamic and changing craft, one tied to America’s past. We will read and discuss all sorts of fascinating books and essays on the subject, each giving us a different perspective on both the “sweet science” and the people who tried to master it. We will watch film, read literature, and work with some documents from different time periods. Through lectures, we will also encounter some of the more enlightening and enlivening stories of boxing’s past.