Do you want to make progress in your degree, but you just can’t seem to stop thinking about sports? There is a solution! Here is a new History topic class that is open to all majors, with no prerequisites. It will work towards the Social Sciences general education requirement. This will combine discussions of race, class, and gender, and follow the global themes of professional sports in the modern world.
HSTCMP 466: “Sport in the Modern World”, sln: 15443
Prof. Christopher Tounsel (ctounsel@uw.edu), Spring 2023
M/W 8:30-10:20AM
Sport, leisure, and organized competition have been elements of human societies since at least the Greco-Roman period. In many ways, however, sport has served as an 'arena' for the articulation, definition, and rejection of some of the modern world’s most foundational elements. In this class we will investigate the ways in which societies throughout the world have used sports to make particular arguments about race, gender, class, empire, and nationality since the end of the eighteenth century. Particular themes that we will explore include the roles of cricket and soccer in the British Empire, 'Muscular Christianity' and the ideological roots of the YMCA, shifting conceptions of manhood, the 'Nazi' Olympics of 1936, the monetization of professional sports, and the evolving relationship between sports, politics, and human rights.