Event Details

End: June 22, 2014
Contact: events@historic-deerfield.org
More Info: http://www.historic-deerfield.org/event/seminars/let-games-begin-sports-and-recreation-new-england/

Let the Games Begin: Sports and Recreation in New England is a three-day conference of eighteen lectures and demonstrations on the subject of the region’s recreational and sports history from 1620 to 1930. The program begins with lectures on the origin and political role of American football, on the invention of basketball, on the beginnings of baseball and its audiences, and on the story of college athletics and of Fenway Park. Other sessions address competitive and calling dances, toys and board games, and sports uniforms. The conference concludes on Sunday with sessions on snowshoe clubs, canoe-making, recreational fishing, boxing, and bicycling. The Seminar is designed for sports fans, educators, historians, collectors, authors, librarians, and museum curators; students and the general public are cordially invited to attend. A selected and edited transcript of this conference will appear as the 2014 Annual Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife to be issued about two years after the conference. Past Seminar Proceedings and publications by program speakers will be available at the conference.