History 301SP - African Americans and Sports

Students will explore the critical role that athletics and black sports figures have played in debates about racial uplift, citizenship, civil rights, gender norms, and sexuality from the late nineteenth century through the present. Our task will be to examine amateur, collegiate, and professional sports as sites where social markers of race, class, gender, and sexuality have been constructed. The class will investigate the black experience in sports for its intrinsic connections to the history of advancement, exclusion, and identity formation for people of African descent in the United States.

This course is open to Juniors and Seniors.