GWST 3300: Gender, Race, & Sports

3 Credit Hours

This interdisciplinary course approaches sports as an institution with tremendous cultural, social, economic, and political power. Using feminist theoretical frameworks, students interrogate assumptions about the human body, while attending to the ways that popular discourses about gender and race frame our understanding of athletic performance. Students consider how sport is used to delineate membership, community and belonging. Possible topics include gender verification, scientific racism, nationalism, the business of sport, scandal, and fan culture.

Course Learning Outcomes
Students who successfully complete this course will be able to:

Explain how social categories such as gender and race shape athletes’ experiences with competitors, fans, news media and other stakeholders.
Identify social, historical, political, and legal forces that inform how and when individuals participate in competitive sports.
Compare disciplinary perspectives on the relationship between gender, race, and sport.
Apply key gender theory concepts to the study of sport
Evaluate media coverage of the sporting world using feminist, queer, and/or critical race theories.