Please Note: This event has expired.
Speakers present on a wide variety of topics from York County’s 270 years of history.
April 10- Dr. John Bloom, “The Imperial Gridiron: Masculinity, “Civilization,” and Football at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.”
Many recognize the athletic success that the famous football teams at the Carlisle Indian School enjoyed during at the turn of the 20th century. Football served as a publicity tool meant to promote the school’s mission to assimilate Indigenous Americans into Anglo-Protestant identities. Students found in football victories inspiring moments of empowerment. Yet for both students and school officials, football proved to be treacherous. Come and listen to this story of Carlisle Indian School football, one that goes beyond the legend of Jim Thorpe and explores how the game both built up and tore down an institution.
John Bloom is a Professor of History at Shippensburg University. He is the author of To Show What an Indian Can Do: Sports at Native American Boarding Schools, as well as other books dealing with sports history and sociology. He is currently finishing a second book on Carlisle Indian School sports with Matthew Bentley entitled, The Imperial Gridiron: Manhood, “Civilization,” and Football at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.
