COMM 3430: Communication, Culture & Sport
3 Credit Hours
Restricted to students with 57-180 credits (Juniors or Seniors)
This class is not open to anyone who has previously taken COMM 3000 with the topic: Sports, Communication and Society
How and when did play become such a serious, high-stakes endeavor? How does being a fan at a ball game collapse economic-class distinctions? How are masculinity and femininity constructed through sport? Whose fantasy gets played out in fantasy sports and what are the implications? Is the dominance of the NFL at stake as the CTE crisis becomes obvious? How do war metaphors shape the way we perceive different sports and their cultural value? What can we learn about larger social relations from studying sport? Thinking critically about sport as a social institution, our readings and discussions will explore the intersections of power, gender/sexuality, race and ethnicity, class and national identity. The goal of the course is to facilitate critical thinking about sport as a site of cultural production. Students will be prompted to make connections between the discourses of sport and other arenas of public life as well as their own life experiences.
Learning Objectives
- Identify the elements of sport that parallel religion;
- Explain the value of understanding sport as a microcosm of society;
- Apply sport-related concepts to other political and professional contexts;
- Examine the sports metaphors in our language and evaluate their implications;
- Apply critical thinking about sport in the creation of your own commentary.
In this course, you will
Interrogate your history and relationship with sport with your family;
Investigate a sport and culture of interest;
Apply course concepts to your daily sports viewing and participation activities.
Jamie Skerski
Jamie Skerski is a Teaching Professor in the Department of Communication and earned a PhD in Communication & Culture from Indiana University in 2005.
She is the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies and is also the course director for Public Speaking. She teaches courses about discourse and identity, cultural criticism, and persuasion. Her most recent research project investigates the contemporary tomboy and she has a TEDxCU talk entitled .