Boxing in America: History and Practice

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

In this course, students will study the history of boxing in the United States and learn a great deal about the craft of boxing, what commentators have called "the sweet science." They will do so in conventional and innovative ways. The course will explore the story of boxing in America from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. It will start in England and colonial America, move to places like nineteenth-century New York, New Orleans, and the California mining camps 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 urban decay and changing race politics. The story of boxing is the story of America. The class will look at the rise of cities, mass migration, changing understandings of race and class, urban history, and the fortunes and misfortunes of postwar American culture. Now for the innovative. Students will also learn about the finer points of craft, how training for boxing changed over time, and how technique developed. They will do so by doing it themselves. They will learn to throw a punch and to defend. They will practice footwork. They will train as boxers did and still do. By doing all this, students will come to appreciate the finer points of a dynamic and changing sport, one tied to America's past. Each class session will include this sort of active learning, turning what we learn from reading and discussion into the kinetic.