At 2pm on May 23, 1914, a group of men wearing cocked hats, white wigs, and knee-breeches, emerged from the Fraunces Tavern, walked slowly up Broad Street, and then turned down Wall Street towards the river, accompanied by the steady beat of a Continental drum corps. “Had George Washington’s statue on the steps of the Sub-Treasury come to life,” remarked one witness, “he would surely have thought that the old Revolutionary days had returned.”  But it was merely the advance guard of a parade celebrating lower Wall Street’s importance not just as a center of the tea and coffee trade, but also as a birthplace of the revolution.

Prof. Travis Vogan's new book,Keepers of the Flame:NFL Films and the Rise of Sports Media, will be released by the University of Illinois Press next month.

Jaime Schultz (PhD 2005, Sport, Health, Leisure & Physical Studies) and currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Penn State University, has published "Qualifying Times: Points of Change in U.S. Women's Sports" (University of Illinois Press, 2014).

On January 27, 2014, the University of Iowa American Studies Department met to discuss the ramifications of the American Studies Association’s decision to boycott Israeli academic institutions and evaluate our own standing as a departmental member of the ASA. As a diverse collection of interdisciplinary scholars, we hold different positions on the ASA’s decision to boycott.  After an extended discussion of pros and cons, we decided to retain our departmental membership in the ASA.  While we understand that some of our colleagues may decline to renew their individual memberships, our departmental membership is a professional matter.  In keeping with the standards required for hiring, promotion and tenure at Iowa and other research institutions, faculty members and graduate students are expected to attend conferences and make presentations at conventions held by scholarly organizations such as the American Studies Association, the Modern Language Association (MLA), the American Historical Association (AHA), and the North American Society for the Study of Sport History (NASSH).  We often attend and present at such conventions. We value our ties to the larger American studies community. We believe remaining an active member of the ASA is a more effective way to influence its future.