This course is designed to enhance students’ oral and written skills in Spanish as well as to promote their critical understanding of Hispanic culture, history and society through the discussion and analysis of sport and sporting culture. The relevance of sports will be explored in order to better understand Spanish-speaking societies and their cultural practices. Following the premise that sport is a powerful form of cultural identity, its study will be used to promote cross-cultural understanding and to engage students with historical and sociological issues. We will explore the evolution of sport as an integral part of the modern history of a region or group and will analyze how various club and national teams, as well as individual athletes, have functioned as vehicles for cultural expression.

This course is structured thematically around a regional and generic framework. We will look at issues and themes common to a region as a whole, focusing in on individual countries as case studies to illuminate these. The topics we will investigate and discuss as they pertain to modern sport include: diffusion and globalization; hegemony, dependency and nationalism; politics and the state; culture, ethnicity and race; religion; economic class; gender; commercialization, modernization and professionalization; immigration; health and morality; violence, crime and vice; marketing; economics and labor productivity; the media and the arts. In order to investigate these topics, we will approach them through varied readings in the fields of history, sociology, ethnic studies, popular culture, identity, semiotics, mass media and technology.