A Brief History of Bladderball [research materials and essay] by Sarah Hammond

Sarah Ruth Hammond (1977-2011) was born and raised in Oberlin, Ohio. She received her BA degree in 1999, and her PhD in History of American Religion in 2010, both from Yale University. As a Yale undergraduate, Hammond wrote her senior essay on the history of Bladderball, a game traditionally played by Yale students between 1954 and 1982, after which it was banned by the university's administration due to the raucous and sometimes disruptive nature of the game. Hammond received numerous awards as both an undergraduate and graduate student, including the Andrew F. Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies; the Richard J. Franke Interdisciplinary Fellowship; and a Lake Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship from the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. She also worked for several years at the Yale Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS. At the time of her death, Sarah Hammond was a visiting professor at the College of William and Mary.