Associate Professor
Ph.D., in American Studies, University of Maryland College Park (1990)
19th-Century American Social and Cultural History; American Sport History; Women’s History; American Studies; Material Culture


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Office: 4317 Friedmann Hall
E-mail: linda.borish@wmich.edu
Phone: 269-387-4631

Teaching

I teach a range of courses in American history and culture at the undergraduate and graduate level. For undergraduates I teach the U.S. History survey to 1877 and upper level American history in Antebellum America, American Sport History, and have directed senior thesis and internships. I teach in Lee Honors College offering courses on American culture. At the graduate level I teach courses in interdisciplinary approaches such as Material Culture and the Built Environment, American Studies, Graduate Seminar in American Sport History, research seminars, and other graduate courses. I have directed Ph.D. dissertations and thesis.

Research

My research focuses on American sport and health history with an emphasis on gender and ethnicity, and rural and urban contexts. I have published articles on antebellum New England rural women's well-being and articles on Jewish American women, sports, and social change. My research interests in American Studies include a variety of historical sources and I have served as the Immediate Past President of the Great Lakes American Studies Association and have been selected as the International Ambassador for the North American Society for Sport History, 2000-2001. I serve on the Editorial Board, Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice (Routledge) and have received external grants for my research projects.

Fellowships, Grants, and Honors

Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Research Award Grant, 2005, for research on book project, "Not Merely Confined to the Gymnasium”: Jewish Women in American Sport, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, awarded December 2004.

Named to the 2005 Who’s Who in Aquatic Leadership in the United States for work on history of American women swimmers and the Olympic Games, by the United States Water Fitness Association.

Southern Jewish Historical Society Grant, for historical writing and documentary film project, Settlement Houses to Olympic Stadiums: Jewish Women in American Sport, with filmmaker Shuli Eshel, 2003.

Jewish Federation of Kalamazoo & Southwest Michigan Grant for American Jewish history for education work related to the 350th Anniversary of the first Jews in the United States, 2004-05, September 2003.

Selected Publications

“`The Cradle of American Champions, Women Champions … Swim Champions’: Charlotte Epstein, Gender and Jewish Identity, and the Physical Emancipation of Women in Aquatic Sports,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 21 (March 2004): 197-235.

“Women, Sports, and American Jewish Identity in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” book chapter in With God on their Side: Sport in the Service of Religion, Tara Magdalinksi and Timothy J.L. Chandler, Eds. (London: Routledge Press, 2002), pp. 71-98.

“Benevolent America: Rural Women, Physical Recreation, Sport and Health Reform in Ante-Bellum New England,” The International Journal of the History of Sport, Vol. 22, 6 (November 2005): 946-973.

Sports in American History: From Colonization to Globalization, co-authored with Gerald Gems and Gertrud Pfister (Champaign, IL; Human Kinetics Publishers, manuscript under contract).

“Michigan Jewish Women, Physical Culture and Sport in the Early Decades of the Twentieth Century” with Elizabeth A. Zanoni, Michigan Jewish History, (forthcoming Fall 2006).

“Jewish American Women and Sport, 1880-1940s: An Historical Overview and Perspectives,” in G. Eisen/H.Kaufman/M. Laemmer, Eds., book chapter in Sport and Physical Education in Jewish History (Netanya, Israel: The Wingate Institute, 2003), pp. 56-69.

“`Bloomerdom Blooming’: Rural Women, the Bloomer Costume, and Health Reforms for Outdoor Exercise in Antebellum New England,” in Sport and Nature in History, Jean-Michel Delaplace, Sylvain Villaret, William Chameyrat, Eds. (Sankt Augustin, Germany: Academia Verlag, 2004), pp. 423-432.

“Settlement Houses to Olympic Stadiums: Jewish American Women, Sports, and Social Change, 1880s-1930s," International Sports Studies Journal, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2000): 5-24.

`An Interest in Physical Well-Being Among the Feminine Membership': Sporting Activities for Women at Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Associations," American Jewish History 87 (March 1999): 61-93.

Other Professional Activities

Documentary Film, in progress, Settlment Houses to Olympic Stadums: Jewish Women in American Sport; Exceuctive Prodcuer, Historical Consultant, and Research, Co-Writer, with Filmmaker Shuli Eshel, Director/Producer.