Urban Sport

Catalog description

This course examines how cities and sport have influenced, interacted with, and shaped each other from the Industrial Revolution through periods of immigration and post-industrialization to the present era of urban sports entertainment districts, with an emphasis on the United States. Throughout, it focuses on issues of inclusion and exclusion based on race, ethnicity, class, and gender as common understandings of who was permitted to participate in different kinds of athletic activities and in different parts of cities changed. The course also examines how the growth of cities and changing ideas about architecture and urban design influenced what sports were able to flourish in different cities at different times and how the construction of sporting spaces similarly reshaped not only the physical appearance of urban spaces, but also how those spaces were understood in the minds of many Americans. Urban Sports is a deep dive into how playing and watching sports are shaped by the city and have themselves shape the geography, design, architecture, morals, and economics of American cities.