230676 Sports and Society in the Americas: Media, Discourses, Identities (BS) (SoSe 2026)

The course Sports and Society in the Americas: Media, Discourses, Identities focuses on describing and analyzing the role of sports events in everyday life, discourse and culture throughout North, Central, and South America. Instead of considering sport as simple entertainment, the course proposes students to study sports as an important cultural concept that supports national identity and belonging. During the course, students will examine how sport is presented in different media, paying special attention to the stories and values about major events and important sports figures treated as heroes. Throughout the rest of the course, students will work with a wide range of materials, i.e., news, advertising, social media, streaming platforms, and fan communities, to understand how media industries build narratives of triumph, defeat, controversy, identity, and collective feeling. The course will focus on how sport relates with migration, Indigenous presence, Black and Afro diasporic cultures, and gender diversity, encouraging students to see how these themes travel across borders and shape global perceptions of the Americas. By the end of the course, students will get important tools to read sport not just as entertainment, but as a rich cultural text that reveals deeper social tensions, historical legacies, and struggles over identity and representation across the Americas.