SPRT.3025 History of Sport in Latin America and the Caribbean
This course examines the evolution of sport in Latin America from the late 19th century until the present. Colonial and imperial powers introduced sports such as soccer (football), baseball, basketball, boxing, and cricket during periods of colonization and nation-state consolidation, but these sports were eventually shaped by local and regional circumstances. In Latin America, sports have historically been male-centric, yet women joined factory sponsored sports leagues and became players on the world stage in soccer, softball, and basketball. Sports were/are spectacles to be observed and marketed, practices to be engaged, are inclusive and exclusive, and moreover, intrinsic to the evolution of modernity, identity, and nation-state formation. Topics will be examined regionally (Southern cone, Central America and Mexico, the Caribbean) and include the role sport played in politics, economics, citizenship, revolution/violence, as well gender and race relations.
LA