Sports in American Society

Question

Instructions

M2A1: Project 1: Analyzing a Sports Icon

Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio ca 1954.

As your readings mention in several places, we can understand a lot about our cultural values by looking at the way that we idolize and make icons of certain individuals who excel in a professional sport. Your job in this project will be to write a short paper in which you apply a social science perspective to the analysis of a well-known sports icon. Please make use of the linked resource guide here on researching sports icons. This project will be due at the end of the Module 2.

Before beginning Project 1, please be sure you have thoroughly read and reviewed all of the content in the first two modules. Pay special attention to the theoretical viewpoints in the reading materials, as well as your and your classmates' positions in the discussion boards. Then, please write a 750 word essay (approximately 3 pages of double-spaced, 12-point font of text) addressing the following questions. A bibliography should make up an additional page.

Please construct an essay addressing the following questions:

1) Choose one famous sports icon and briefly explain why you have made that choice. What is it about the icon that attracts your attention?

2) Based upon your class readings and videos, what are the characteristics that typify a sports icon? Be sure to clarify where you can why certain, successful professional athletes fail to reach iconic status (even with comparable statistics), while others achieve superstardom. Is it something about the athlete or society’s collective judgment that raises an athlete to iconic status?

3) Explain in detail your view of the impact (good, bad, or indifferent) of having sports icons in society. For example, do such icons help bring people together, or, do icons cause societal disillusionment, falling out of favor with their fans due to scandal, personality flaws etc.?

To successfully complete Project 1, you will need to organize your responses to these questions and then craft a formatted essay that includes each of the following:

• A title page;

• Well-developed introductory paragraph explaining the purpose of the essay and briefly referencing some of the main points/contentions offered in the essay;

• The body of the essay should consist of your effort to best answer the primary questions from the assignment prompt and should consist of the required length of words of text (approximately 3 pages of double-spaced and 12 point font of text). Though the method by which this is done is largely up to you, it is essential that the responses to the questions in the prompt be based upon scholarly readings and should remain at all times defensible (in an academic sense). You have a great deal of information to draw from in creating your essay, including the assigned readings and hyperlinked sources in the module notes. As is the case with every assignment in SOC 247, presenting any unsubstantiated, illogical, or indefensible position will have an adverse effect on the final grade. Please direct any questions regarding these expectations to the instructor;

• A concise concluding paragraph that briefly restates both the purpose of the essay as well as some of the primary argument offered by you, the essay’s author. Be sure the concluding paragraph does not introduce new information;

• A list of all sources consulted in the preparation of the essay. The essay should be formatted according to APA-style documentation. This includes the format of the list of references.

Project 1: M2A1 will be due at the end of Module Two.