HIST 280: Sports and Ethnic America, 1900 – Present

This course will examine how sports and leisure culture reveal popular ‘notions’ or stereotypes and cultural assumptions about race, ethnicity, class, and gender in twentieth and twenty-first century America. In addition to examining how athletic competitions served as a microcosm for social conflicts and change, we will evaluate how team spirit and individual sporting triumphs overcame or ameliorated social divisions and boundaries of exclusion. This course will pursue a thematic approach following a loose chronological order including, but not limited to: Sports and popular culture, Japanese internment and World War II, segregation and integration, Cold War nationalism and race, immigration and Americanization pressures, sexuality, homophobia and HIV/AIDS. Title IX and sexism, the commodification of children, America’s ‘melting pot’ theme and national pride, and Indian mascot controversies.