Academic Catalog 2018-2019 
    
    Mar 29, 2024  
Academic Catalog 2018-2019 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

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HST 209 - Race, Gender, and Nationalism in American Sports

Course Units: 1
(Not Offered this Academic Year) This course examines the development and the history of US sports from the 19th through the 21st centuries with special focus on sports’ bond with nationalism, race, and gender. Modern sports cannot escape its association with US emergence in international affairs at the end of the 19th century. Intertwined with the process of establishing national identity were muscular Christian notions about masculine prowess and belief in women’s natural physical limitations accompanied by a persistent belief in the fundamental superiority of the white race and its obligation to dominate over “inferior” races and cultures. As surely as sport became associated with American identity, nationalism, gender, and race became integral defining characteristics of sport. This course will be driven primarily by reading and discussion. Lectures will be used to supplement and place the readings in historical perspective, but the focus will be on reading, comprehension, and analysis. Students are encouraged to bring a variety of pre-occupations, pre-conceived ideas, and personal viewpoints to the course; they will be expected to give oral and written expression to their analysis and perspectives.



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