Note to students: After you’ve watched the videos below, please compose a detailed question for each presenter. Please submit your questions at the bottom of this page by Wednesday, July 8th at 11:59pm (please still do this if you’ve missed the deadline; you will earn partial credit for a late submission).

The instructor of your section will select two student questions to bring into our full-group discussion on Thursday evening.

Sports and Pandemic:  History for the Here & Now

April Yoder, Ph.D.

April Yoder has been interested in Latin America and people from the region since elementary school when a recent immigrant from Mexico joined her third-grade class because her teacher was one of the few in the district who spoke Spanish. She developed that interest through studying language and literature during much of her academic career. She was always interested in how politics infiltrate popular culture and after completing an M.A. in Latin American Studies, she took a professor’s advice and turned her focus from literature to baseball.

Studying sport and its various effects on society not only led Dr. Yoder to an exciting research question about how Dominicans used baseball to express their expectations for democracy, but it has been a great way to get students excited about history.

Love-forming and Love-sharing in the time of quarantine

Pat McGrady, Ph.D.

Pat McGrady is an assistant professor of sociology in the Psychology Department at the University of New Haven. Originally from southern West Virginia, he moved to Connecticut in 2012 to teach at the University. He teaches a broad range of courses at the University that include: Sociology, Deviance, Social Inequality, and Statistics for Behavioral Sciences. His research interests focus on sex/gender, sexuality, identity, and stigma resistance. Most recently he has been working on a project about the LGBTQ+ choral social movement in the United States and how membership in such organizations helps individuals construct an activist identity and a coherent sense of self.