As a precaution to help reduce the spread of COVID-19, the Adult Education Seminars Program’s Summer 2020 term will be moving online. Virtual seminars will meet via Zoom video conference and will use email and Google Drive folders to share resources and communicate with instructors and participants. For more information about the Newberry’s virtual seminars and these tools, including a Zoom tutorial, please see our Virtual Seminars FAQ page. If you have questions about online learning, please feel free to reach out to seminars@newberry.org.

For more information about the Newberry’s response to COVID-19 please visit www.newberry.org/covid19.

Seminar Description

As Chicagoans hunker down and miss the Cubs and White Sox during the COVID-19 Pandemic, people often assume that professional baseball has always been a permanent feature of American life. But it hasn’t: during World War I and the influenza pandemic that followed hard on its heels, baseball became a flashpoint for political conflict and public health concerns. This seminar will examine this history and connect it with our current circumstances.

One session. Registration – $30

Bill Savage has been teaching courses on baseball history, literature, and film at Northwestern University and the Newberry Library for over 20 years. A member of the Society for American Baseball Research, he wrote about the Cubs for ESPN in 2016 and believes that Cubs and Sox fans should get along better.

This seminar is part of a special series examining humanities contexts for pandemics past and present. Explore the other seminars in the series, including The Philosophy of Anxiety, Familiar Strains, Chords, and Dischords: Musical Echoes from the 1918 Pandemic, Utopias, and Arts of Dying: The Visual Culture of the Black Death in Medieval Europe.

Materials List

Required:

• There are no required materials for this seminar.

First Reading:

• There is no reading assignment for this seminar.

Registration Information

Online registration opens at 9 am (CST) on Wednesday, June 3.

Please note: Due to COVID-19, the Adult Education Seminars staff is working remotely and will be unable to process registration over the phone. For more information about registration, including a guide to online registration, see our Registration Information page. Questions? Please contact seminars program staff via email at seminars@newberry.org.

We offer a 10% discount to members, seniors, and students.

This seminar has reached capacity. Please email seminars@newberry.org to be added to the wait list.

This seminar is part of the Newberry’s Adult Education Seminars Program. Learn more about registering for a seminar, program policies, or teaching a seminar.