Get ready, history majors.

“Surf’s up!”

Professor William Moore is offering a History of Surfing Seminar for the Spring 2004 semester.

The course, which is only available for history majors who have taken History 290, hopes to break new ground. Moore doesn’t want to pinpoint a direct history of the sport, but focuses on its cultural aspects and how the pastime has played across different cultures.

“It’s going to be a survey of the surfing literature. It’s also going to be a survey of the different perspectives on surfing,” Moore said. “I strongly believe that people will put more effort into classes where they’re doing something they’re interested in.”

And hopefully that interest will include a fairly large range of ideas including Gidget, surfing pioneer Duke Kahanamoku and the modern international and monetary surfing culture.

“Surfing can be an intellectual endeavor as well as being a lifestyle. This is very much a cultural history undertaking,” Moore said.

It’s a different kind of history, and that’s attracted students.

“I just want to do something that’s a social history. Something that wasn’t a focus on a history of a government or the history of a nation,” senior Macan Singh said. “I don’t know anything about surfing. … I expect the class to touch on the philosophical side, if there’s a philosophical element.”

“I’ve always been interested in other cultures,” said junior Tim Kane, who hopes to take the course. “The ancient Polynesians and Hawaiians have always used surfing and it will be interesting to see their effects upon Western culture.”

But if the course hit on surfing’s “big questions”, there’s one of those that Moore won’t touch.

“When did surfing first come to Cape Fear?”

“Wow! There are other people on campus that could answer that question better than I can,” Moore said. “I’m not going to get into that argument.”

“But the other piece of this is, it’s a researching seminar, so we’re going to be reading things together. Then the students (can) pick a question like ‘How did surfing come to Cape Fear’ and then write their own research paper on the topic. They’ve got the whole history of surfing to choose from.”

“It’s new waters and it’s a new pipeline, but we’ll see how it goes. I’m excited about teaching it.”