Courses

This course explores the ways organized sport constitutes and disrupts dominant understandings of nation, race, gender, and sexuality throughout the Americas. Working from the notion that sport is “more than a game,” the class will examine the social, cultural and political impact of sports in a variety of American contexts in the past and present. While our primary geographic focus will be the United States, Brazil, and the Caribbean, the thrust of the course encourages students to consider sports in local, national, and transnational contexts.  The guiding questions of the course are: What is the relationship between sport and society? How does sport inform political struggles within and across national borders? How does sport reinforce and/or challenge social hierarchies? Can sport provide visions of alternative conceptions of the self and community? Throughout the semester, we will examine such topics as: the continuing political struggles surrounding mega-events such as the Olympics and World Cup, the role of professional baseball in the rise and fall of Jim Crow segregation, the contradictory impact of high school football in Texas, the centrality of tennis to the women’s movement in the United States, and the role of sports in the growth of the city of Los Angeles. Course materials include works by historians, sociologists, social theorists, and journalists who have also been key contributors to the burgeoning field of sports studies.