Sport and Society in Historical Perspective

This course explores the ways in which historians have used the study of sport to answer broader historical questions. Students begin their journey with a conceptual framework of modern sport as a distinct form of physical culture that began in the eighteenth century before focusing on the ways in which sport has helped articulate and reinforce dominant gender and racial ideologies in American society as well as to challenge those same ideologies. Finally, the course considers sport in a global context by examining the complex relationship between sport and nationalism.