The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2015-2016

The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, 2015–2016 is an anthology of 15 scholarly essays that utilize the national game to examine topics whose import extends beyond the ballpark. The articles in this collection constitute a significant contribution to baseball literature, and readers will find the commentaries interesting and accessible. The anthology is divided into six parts. “Biography: From Mythology to Authenticity,” “Gender and Generations,” “Race and Ethnicity on the Base Paths,” Ballparks Abandoned and Envisioned,” “Baseball Cinema,” and “Business, Law, and the Game.” Articles include biographer Jane Leavy’s “Finding George: The Unique Challenges of Writing Sports Biography,” “Seeking a More Authentic Jackie Robinson” by filmmaker Sarah Burns, and “Blown Saves: The Fate of Baseball’s Silent Cinema” by film scholar Marshall G. Most. The essays represent several of the leading presentations from the 2015-2016 Cooperstown Symposium, on Baseball and American Culture, an annual academic baseball conference, founded in 1989 and cosponsored by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and SUNY Oneonta.