Sports in United States History

Catalog description

Focuses on major themes in American sports history, organized topically around fall sports. Themes encourage students to think critically about relationships among sport and society, identity, community, media, capitalism and education. Lectures, discussions, readings and films explore race, gender, class and sexuality as categories of analysis, and the role of sport in constructing ideas about the body along gender and racial lines. Also highlights social justice issues in sport as well as athlete activism throughout the twentieth century. Explores the ways in which the participation of Black, Latino/a and Native American athletes has both mirrored and diverged from Black, Latino/a and Native American citizens' participation in society throughout United States history. Also studies the process through which the equal opportunity to participate in school sports became defined as a civil right and, more recently, a human right.