The Ultimate Fight: Sport and Social Power
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Summer 2013

Including faculty, schedule, credits, CRN and location.

Level: Undergraduate
Division: The New School for Public Engagement
School: School of Undergraduate Studies
Department: Social Sciences
Course Number: NANT 3697
Course Format: Lecture
Location: Online
Permission Required: No
Topics:
  • Anthropology
  • Social Sciences
  • Sociology
Description:
How should we look at sport? Is it play? Leisure? Pastime? This course offers students an introduction to critical perspectives on sport. We examine its cultural, social, political, and economic dimensions and ask: How should we understand people's intense identification with particular sports teams and the collective experience of fandom? Why are so many people invested in sport as a cultural activity? What does it represent, for whom, and why? We first examine early anthropological studies of sport and move on to explore modern sport and its relationship to political movements, processes of globalization, labor migration, and social hierarchies. Assignments and class discussions draw on ethnographies, sports studies, films, critical theory, and contemporary media.