There's a Deathless Myth on the Close Tonight: Re-assessing Rugby's Place in the History of Sport

Rugby School has traditionally been credited with an important place in the development of modern organised games. The most famous names in this attribution have been William Webb Ellis, the pupil who ‘invented’ rugby football, and Dr. Thomas Arnold, the headmaster who gained global recognition through the publication of Tom Brown's Schooldays. Not surprisingly, academic historians have debunked the significance of both of these men, since it is demonstrable that Webb Ellis did nothing of significance and that Arnold had little interest in games. But the significance of the school in this respect is in some ways even greater in reality – though quite different – from that in the popular myths. ‘The Close’ in the mid-nineteenth century was a recreational and moral laboratory in the making of games. The boys there not only invented new rules, skills and customs but took them rapidly to other schools, universities and cities. Moreover, such Rugbeans as Richard Sykes, William Arnold, Herbert Castens and Tom Wills took the practices of the Close to five continents, instituting a global sporting revolution which would have occurred whether ‘organised games’ became an approved necessity of education or not. This account uses some important previously uncited sources, especially the various minutes and journals produced by the boys at Rugby.     

Citation Behavior of Aerospace Engineering Faculty

Citation analyses provide valuable insights into the usage of library collections and assist in collection management decision-making; however, there are few engineering citation analyses of faculty publications. This study addresses that gap through an analysis of 3488 citations from aerospace engineering faculty publications by source, format, age, and subject. Local holdings were assessed based on the 80/20 rule and journal titles ranked. In addition to supporting citation patterns identified in previous citation analyses, this study revealed some novel relationships involving formats and subjects. The results of this study have implications for collection management.     

The processing of cohesion in fiction and non-fiction by good and poor readers

Halliday and Hasan's (1976) concept of textual cohesion has generated considerable interest among reading educators. However, there has been very little research which has considered how cohesion operates during reading. This paper reports on a study which used a selective deletion procedure to investigate how good and poor readers (N = 44) from a secondary school in England were able to use cohesion while reading fiction and non-fiction. A feature of the analysis of the results thus obtained is the validation of the concept of a reading development continuum (RDC). Results indicate that good readers were more successful in maintaining the global unity of text than were the poor readers. As well, both groups of readers found it easier to perceive cohesion in fiction than they did in non-fiction. Implications of these findings for reading instruction at the elementary and secondary levels are discussed.     

Revisiting (and Revising?) Sports Boycotts: From Rugby against South Africa to Soccer in Israel

For the first time in nearly 30 years, 2013 saw increasing public awareness of calls for a comprehensive boycott of and sanctions on a state based on questions of an ‘entrenched system of racial discrimination’. The call to boycott South African sport emerged in the 1950s as the apartheid state was developing and refining its comprehensive and systematic legal form amid growing international pressure for decolonisation. This is a different social and political context than the call 50 years later by Palestinian civil society for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. This paper draws on analyses of international anti-apartheid movements' campaigns against sporting contact with South Africa and the BDS call for the isolation of the Israeli state to propose a theory of sports boycotts. It looks at the anti-apartheid campaigns to consider ways in which the BDS campaign has an impact on existing historical understandings of cultural boycotts as a tactical and strategic campaign tool.