ASRC 2505 - [Literature, Sport, and Ideology]

(crosslisted)
(also ENGL 2751) (LA-AS)

Fall. 3 credits.

Next offered 2013-2014.

G. Farred.

This course will explore the relations amongst sport, literature, and ideology. Reading texts from a variety of genres, novels, “memoirs,” social histories (that are also love letters to a particular team), and some forms that refuse easy categorization, this course seeks to understand the very distinct role, and often hard to define exactly, that sport “performs” in literature. From Don DeLillo’s Underworld to Eduardo Galeano’s beautiful, cryptic contemplation on football (Soccer in Sun and Shadow) to CLR James’ magisterial work on cricket (Beyond a Boundary), this course will engage writings on sport from all over the world. Sport, the premise is here, opens the reader up to the world in a way that no other literary pursuit does.