FYI -- for those in the Chicagoland area -- whoever attends the lecture this
Thursday, please let the group know how it went! Pass along as appropriate.




CHICAGO SEMINAR ON SPORT AND CULTURE
SPONSORED BY NORTHEASTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY AND THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY

(this) Thursday Nov. 14, 2008

"The Borders of Free Agency: Dominican Athletes in the Baseball World,
1975-2006"

Daniel Gilbert
Dept. of History
Macalester College


We are pleased to invite you to the Chicago Seminar on Sport and Culture at the
Newberry Library, co-sponsored by Northeastern Illinois University and North
Central College. All sessions begin at 3:30 PM. The lectures are open to the
public at no charge. The Newberry Library is located at 60 W. Walton, Chicago,
IL.


One of the most important developments in the recent history of professional
baseball has been the emergence of the "baseball academy" system in the
Dominican Republic. This paper considers the academy system's impact on both the
trajectory of Dominican professional baseball and the reconfiguration of the
wider baseball world since the late 1970s. The paper argues that the academy
system brought a fundamental shift to the place of Dominican identity in the
baseball world, as Major League Baseball's teams increasingly incorporated and
mobilized forms of Dominicanness within their own talent development and
marketing initiatives. The paper considers this development as a signal
component of the labor history of baseball's era of free agency, a history
defined as much by new practices of enclosure as by new promises of mobility.

Daniel Gilbert teaches in the American Studies department at Macalester College
in St. Paul, Minnesota. He recently completed his doctoral work in American
Studies at Yale University, with a dissertation titled Expanding the Strike
Zone: Baseball in the Age of Free Agency.


For further information, contact Steve Riess at 773 442 5631 or
s-riess@....



<><><><><><><><><>
Anthony Salazar
editor, La Prensa del Beisbol Latino
chair, Latino baseball committee
Society for American Baseball Research (SABR.org)

salazar8017@...
206-972-3510