HIST 31956

About this course

This course will examine the role of sports in American life as a form of mass leisure that has shaped and been shaped by politics, social norms, and economics. From horse racing and prize fighting during the Colonial Era through the emergence of baseball and college football in the late Nineteenth Century, mass viewership of televised sporting events in the mid-Twentieth Century, multimillion dollar stadium subsidies offered by urban governments in the early Twentieth First Century, up to the widespread adoption of online legal sports betting in the present day, this course will rely on readings, lectures, and self-directed research to make a scholarly analysis of sport as a consequential presence in American life.