Discussion 2 Content and QuestionsMaterials to use (from Week 3): Cayleff and Runstedtler online

readings, Unforgivable Blackness, America’s Newsreel; Sports Matters CH 9

For Discussion 2, answer at least 1 Jack Johnson question and at least 1 Babe Didrikson question.

Jack Johnson Questions

What about Jack Johnson threatened some Americans? What about Jack Johnson inspired some Americans? When answering this question, keep in mind:

Who? Specific groups/individuals

Include an analysis of his athletic feats, his body, and his lifestyle out of the ring

How Johnson’s contemporaries felt about him, not what people today might think

How did Galveston influence Johnson’s worldview?

How does Theresa Runstedtler define Jack Johnson as a Rebel Sojourner?

How did the heavyweight championship symbolize “survival of the fittest” and supremacy at the turn of the twentieth century?

Babe Didrikson Questions

How did some members of the press (who liked Babe) help to portray an image that was appropriately feminine?

How does Cayleff show that “muscles, strength, strain, sweat and dirt were offensive and unfeminine”?

How and why did medical doctors, psychologists, and journalists work so hard to define Babe as Other?

Why did Babe embrace her “oddity status” in the 1930s?

How and why do you think Babe later worked to construct a conformist image? What role did her social class status play?

Assignment Materials:

http://site.ebrary.com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/lib/asulib/reader.action?docID=10540419

http://fod.infobase.com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/p_ViewVideo.aspx?