Course Description

For more than 150 years, baseball has not only been our national pastime, but also a source of inspiration for some of this country’s finest writers. As we endure another dormant winter, awaiting the promise of spring and a new season on the diamond, we’ll explore the very best that baseball’s literary canon has to offer, from classic novels (Malamud’s The Natural, Coover’s The Universal Baseball Association…, Delillo’s Pafko at the Wall, Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe, Roth’s The Great American Novel and Harbach’s The Art of Fielding), to short fiction, poetry and even experimental hybrids. Along the way, we’ll consider the meaning and metaphors baseball gives to our ordinary lives and the lessons offered by its heroes and tragedies.