KINES 2600 - Perspectives on Sport and American Society

This course considers both the popular fascination with, and the academic investigation of, sport and American society. Philosophers and sociologists argue that sport has become the one cultural activity that most effectively overcomes distinctions of race, class, gender, ethnicity, politics, and religion, to bind Americans in a community of shared values and aspirations. Conversely, sport has also magnified and reproduced a myriad of social inequalities. Students will routinely appraise how their worldview and personal ethics serve to reproduce, revise, or replace the structure, norms and beliefs associated with local, national, and international sport and physical culture. Through a sociological and historical lens, students will appraise the unifying power of sport, as well as explain how sport serves to reproduce inequalities present in the larger society.