John Wong, Ph.D., an Associate Professor of the Sport Management Program at WSU, will speak in the second Sport Management Research Meeting of the Spring 2019 semester. His presentation, “Cultural Transmission in Seattle: The First American City to Hoist the Stanley Cup,” will occur 4-5 p.m. on Wednesday, March 6, in Cleveland Hall 255 in Pullman.
Located in the scenic Puget Sound, Seattle emerged as a major West Coast city of the United States in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Although a transcontinental railway chose Portland, Oregon as its terminal, Seattle grew both in population and prosperity nonetheless as an extended track linked both cities. Certainly, the railroad fostered a closer link between Seattle and the rest of the country politically, economically, and culturally. As a popular culture endeavor, sporting activities in the city, however, remained very much regional in scope. In 1915, the city joined the Pacific Coast Hockey Association, a major professional hockey league that included franchises in both Canada and the United States. Only two seasons later, the Seattle team captured the Stanley Cup – the first American city to win the prestigious trophy which originated as a championship award for the Dominion of Canada.
Drawing on both primary and secondary sources, this paper argues that Seattle provides a useful case study on cultural transmission running vertically rather than horizontally despite the presence of an international border in North America at the turn of the twentieth century. Moreover, cultural transmission was not necessarily a south-to-north phenomenon as many in Canada, to this day, are so apprehensive about the possibility of being slowly but surely absorbed as the fifty-first state in the American republic as American popular culture seemingly crossing the border unimpeded.
Sport Management Research Meetings are organized by the Sport Management program at Washington State University. They occur monthly and feature faculty and student presentations of ongoing and completed research projects. Students and faculty from all programs are welcome to attend.
The final research meeting this semester will occur on April 10.
Those who miss the presentations but are interested in the topic can access the video archive of past presentations.
