Sports and Society Minor
The interdisciplinary minor in sports and society examines the dynamic ways that exercise, leisure, play, recreation, and sport are shaped by community, culture, history, and society. The minor provides students with the intellectual tools necessary to understand their endeavors' sociocultural context and critically examine the complex ways sport is intimately connected to cultural practices, political lives, and social institutions.
Coursework ensures that students have been exposed to and considered lenses that will help them navigate the complicated dynamics of race, class, gender, ability, sexuality, ethnicity, and nationality that necessarily impact sports today. Our course offerings include a number of interdisciplinary courses that fulfill a range of GE and graduation requirements.
This minor helps prepare students seeking employment, involvement, or association with sports with a robust grounding in the complex social and cultural dynamics that shape the cultural world of sports and athletics. Students interested in a broad range of fields, including but not limited to sports journalism, coaching, sports marketing and business, athletic training, and sports management will gain valuable analytical skills and knowledge for the future.
Upon successful completion of this program, students will be able to:
- Understand social and cultural meanings of sport, leisure, play, and exercise, how these notions interrelate within a broad
variety of contexts, and how they have shifted historically. - Employ critical analytic skills to decipher the complex differences between amateurism and professionalism in sport and the
political and economic consequences of these designations. - Track the variety of ways sport has been used to define social constructions of gender, race, class, ability, ethnicity,
nationality, style, and sexuality. - Analyze the discursive and multi-media efforts to connect sports participants and teams with sports audiences and how
these connections create social, cultural, economic, and political relations across local community, regional, national, and
international levels. - Collaborate effectively across disciplinary and professional boundaries to promote the mental, physiological, and social
benefits of sport. - Be prepared for work in the various industries that integrate with sport, such as marketing, wellness, fashion, community
development, education, policy design, equipment design and fabrication, journalism, and implementation.
The minor consists of a minimum of 15 units.
Lower Division Units
For lower division units, students must take either:
- HIST 114 - Sports in American History (3 units)
or - CCS 275 - Sports and Race (3 units)
Upper Division Units
Students must also take 12 upper division units to include:
- ANTH 445 - Culture, Gender, and Race in Sports (3 units)
And nine elective units selected from the following:
Arts and Letters
- AFRAS 315 - Martial Arts and Wellness Culture of Asia, Africa, and African Diaspora (3 units)
- BRAZ 455 - Sport in Brazilian Society (3 units)
- CCS 360 - Culture of Fútbol: Chicana/os, Latina/os, and Soccer (3 units)
- ECON 406 - Economics of Sports (3 units)
- MALAS 585 - Seminar in the Histories and Cultures of Skateboarding (3 units)
- SOC 330 - Cultural and Historical Origins of Surfing (3 units)
- SOC 331 - Modern Surfing and Globalized Society (3 units)
Health and Human Services
- ENS 318 - Sport, Games, and Culture (3 units)
- ENS 330 - Exercise and Wellness Across the Lifespan (3 units)
Professional Studies and Fine Arts
- HTM 435 - Sporting Events and Festival Management (3 units)
- RTM 304 - Leisure and Tourism (3 units)
- RTM 340 - Conduct of Recreational Sports (3 units)
Note: A student may take no more than six elective units from one college to complete the minor. Courses in the minor may be used to satisfy general education requirements, if applicable.
Advising
David Kamper, Ph.D.
Office: AL-331B | Phone: 619-594-8081 | Email: [email protected]
