{"682844":{"#nid":"682844","#data":{"type":"event","title":"PhD Defense by Eric W. Steagall","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EPhD Defense by Eric W. Steagall\u003Cbr\u003ETHE LAST AMATEUR: BOBBY JONES AND GOLF IN THE 1920s\u003Cbr\u003ETuesday, July 8, 2025, 1:00 pm EST, Zoom Meeting\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAbstract\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ERobert Tyre Jones, Jr., was the premier golfer and one of the most celebrated Americans of the 1920s, a decade remembered as the \u201cgolden age\u201d of sports in the United States. Exceptional athletes dotted the national landscape during this era, but few of \u201cBobby\u201d Jones\u2019s contemporaries dominated their sports without turning professional. He remained an amateur for his entire career, which culminated with the \u201cgrand slam\u201d and his subsequent retirement from tournament golf in 1930. Several journalists and independent researchers have written about Jones and golf, yet none have properly situated him and his sport within the larger societal shifts, conflicts, and developments that took place in 1920s America. And while Jones was the most admired southern figure of the era, no historian or scholar has sufficiently considered what he meant to his native region during the first full decade after the Great War.\u003Cbr\u003E\u201cThe Last Amateur\u201d is a narrative history of the making and meaning of Bobby Jones, on and off the golf course, during the first three decades of the twentieth century. This biographical dissertation goes beyond simply chronicling his life and impact on the game of golf over the course of his competitive career. In exploring how he shaped his times as well as how his times shaped him, it reinterprets Jones\u2019s cultural significance in the South, in America, and in Great Britain. Using newspapers, magazines, periodicals, contemporary autobiographies and memoirs, oral histories, and archival collections, this project makes historiographical contributions to the fields of sports, popular culture, southern, and mass media history.\u003Cbr\u003EAmateurism, a Victorian tradition first invented to preserve England\u2019s rigid class hierarchy, is one of the main threads weaving each chapter of this dissertation together. This dynamic social construct was the basis for governing many sports in general and golf in particular during the 1920s. Bobby Jones personified the core tenets of the \u201cspirit,\u201d or \u201ccode,\u201d of amateurism; his image as a \u201cgentleman amateur\u201d remains one of the defining aspects of his legacy. Nonetheless, he also contested and reshaped this stringent ideal throughout his career. Examining how he grappled with the constraints of amateurism, with his status as a national and international celebrity, and with his own personal struggles reveals new insights on the tensions and contradictions that wrought U.S. society in the period between the Armistice and the first full year of the Great Depression.\u003Cbr\u003EThe Committee Members:\u003Cbr\u003EDr. Johnny Smith (Chair), School of History and Sociology, Georgia Institute of Technology\u003Cbr\u003EDr. Daniel Amsterdam, School of History and Sociology, Georgia Institute of Technology\u003Cbr\u003EDr. Douglas Flamming, School of History and Sociology, Georgia Institute of Technology\u003Cbr\u003EDr. Clif Stratton, Department of History, Washington State University\u003Cbr\u003EDr. Glenn Eskew, Department of History, Georgia State University\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ETHE LAST AMATEUR: BOBBY JONES AND GOLF IN THE 1920s\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"THE LAST AMATEUR: BOBBY JONES AND GOLF IN THE 1920s"}],"uid":"27707","created_gmt":"2025-06-23 18:10:53","changed_gmt":"2025-06-23 18:18:08","author":"Tatianna Richardson","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","field_event_time":{"event_time_start":"2025-07-08T13:00:00-04:00","event_time_end":"2025-07-08T16:00:00-04:00","event_time_end_last":"2025-07-08T16:00:00-04:00","gmt_time_start":"2025-07-08 17:00:00","gmt_time_end":"2025-07-08 20:00:00","gmt_time_end_last":"2025-07-08 20:00:00","rrule":null,"timezone":"America\/New_York"},"location":"ZOOM","extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"221981","name":"Graduate Studies"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"100811","name":"Phd Defense"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[{"id":"1788","name":"Other\/Miscellaneous"}],"invited_audience":[{"id":"78771","name":"Public"}],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}