|
In Semester 1 2020 Keith Rathbone and Tanya Evans are looking forward to teaching a new unit on the history of sport in the Faculty of Arts at Macquarie University. As the unit guide suggests: In all its varieties, sport comes as close to a universal human experience as any other activity. The reach of association football, for example, dwarfs all major religions and political empires. “A Global History of Sport” will draw on wide-ranging inter-disciplinary teaching and research strengths across the university providing historical insight and understanding to the popularity of association football, the refoundation of the Olympics, state biopolitics, the global rise of sport science, health and medical sciences, the fitness industry, and the mediatization of sport in the contemporary world. It will demonstrate the significance and meanings of sport in varied national contexts and across different class, racial, gender, and ethnic groups including AFL and swimming in Australia, the international Olympic movement, association football in South America and Africa, college football in the United States, and the rise of female, LGBT, and transgender athletes.
Tanya will talk about how her recent oral history research on female athletes for the State Library of NSW feeds into her teaching of the new unit and the broader relationship between public history and sport history.
Keith will talk about the first go around of the unit at Macquarie University, its successes and failures, and how he will further integrate his recent research on authoritarianism, liberalism and sport into the class.
|
