- Between weeks 8 and 12, each student should provide a weekly reflection (500 words) on the data you have collected to date.
- What data did you collect?
- What is your initial impression of the data?
- How have the data you have collected this week changed/progressed your thinking about your research project?
- What challenges did you encounter while collecting the data?
- What are your next steps?
- Jenkins, Tricia (08/01/2013). “The Militarization of American Professional Sports: How the Sports-War Intertext Influences Athletic Ritual and Sports Media”. Journal of sport and social issues (0193-7235), 37 (3), p. 245
Tricia Jenkins’ piece adds yet another informative caveat to my larger exploration of various forms of US militarization of culture. Jenkins specifically explores the militarization of professional sport, especially important given the deeply interconnected values that are associated with both institutions and the individuals within them, athletes and soldiers. I actually thoroughly enjoyed reading through Jenkins piece as she offers a plethora of different examples of the intersection between sport and the military. Examples given involve firstly “sports talk” or typical jargon inherent to different popular American sports, that is extensively mobilized by military leaders to describe mission action, name specific operations and missions, and present explanations of foreign military intervention to the public is a more digestible form. This cross-over cloaks the activities of our military in a way that is both highly accessible and acceptable to the general public. Jenkins also speaks to common conventions for sports clubs across the country, such as military appreciation nights which feature players clad in camo-jerseys, soldiers singing the national anthem and throwing out first-pitches at baseball games, and presentations which honor fallen heroes. Jenkins piece is especially useful as she highlights the increase in military rhetorics across American sports following 9/11. George Bush for example, threw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium in the first baseball game following the attacks on the twin towers, clad in a bulletproof vest. Also, former professional football player Pat Tillman is discussed, a former star player for the Arizona Cardinals who left the league to enlist in the army following 9/11. Tillman was killed in the middle east (in reality via friendly fire), but he is regularly evoked across sports as a model hero and an example of a true American. In total, the piece is fantastic and adds yet another wrinkle to my collection of information.
2. https://www.military.com/undertheradar/2018/04/16/these-meaningful-military-traditions-come-native-american-culture.html
This isn’t the specific article that I eventually hoping to utilize, but this specific theme is something that I hope to use in my research paper. In my militarization course with Professor May, we read an article that speaks to the wide usage of Native American terminology in naming military weaponry and missions, as well as a general connection to Native American warrior ethos that is proliferated within different military training schools and on the front lines of war. This brief article speaks to the mobilization of these terms, but the article that Prof May assigned is much more comprehensive, drawing upon the effectiveness of this assimilation. I looked extensively for the article without any success, but I do hope that following a correspondence with Prof May I will be able to locate it. In general, the evoking of Native American terminology adds a certain legitimacy and ironically appropriating accessibility to military action. Where the Native Americans were murdered by the millions, their evoktion also offers a pure sense of warrior and military might. It’s an interesting caveat that I feel will add further depth to the paper.
I am now toying with the idea of doing a podcast instead of a paper, but I am still unsure. Surely, soundbites that I presented to the class were effective in getting across my mission with this research paper, and maybe to actually have them rather than write about them would be more effective. I have started writing, but still am in the beginning stages of the paper and therefore, may still make the switch. I plan to stop by office hours to discuss.