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03/04/08 - Vaught chosen as a Distinguished Faculty Lecturer for the 2008-2009 series
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| David Vaught was selected as a University Distinguished Lecturer. |
Historians have long refuted the myth that Abner Doubleday invented the game in the pastoral village of Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. By insisting that baseball has always been “a city game for city men,” however, they have neglected the very real phenomenon of rural baseball itself.
Vaught’s lecture demonstrates in three case studies—Cooperstown and vicinity in Doubleday’s time, northern California in the 1880s, and southwest Minnesota in the 1950s—that baseball may have been a source of rural nostalgia for city people, but it was the sport of choice for farmers and a powerful cultural agent.
Vaught received his Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Davis, in 1997 and joined Texas A&M University that same year. He specializes in American agriculture, labor, and the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. He is the author of Cultivating California: Growers, Specialty Crops, and Labor, 1875-1920 (1999) and After the Gold Rush: Tarnished Dreams In the Sacramento Valley (2007). Vaught’s current book project has the working title, Country Hardball: America’s Rural Pastime since 1839.
Texas A&M initiated the University Distinguished Lecture Series in 1998 as a forum to present distinguished scholars from an array of disciplines. The lecturers are selected by a committee of faculty members representing each of Texas A&M University's colleges, the George Bush School of Government and Public Service, the General Libraries, as well as representatives from Student Government and the Graduate Student Council, the Council of Principal Investigators, and the Texas A&M University Press.
Visit the Provost’s office website for more information on the University Distinguished Lecture Series.
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Contact: Holly Lambert, hollyalyselambert@tamu.edu, 979.862.4879
