The College of Sciences Distinguished Speaker Series Presents: "Sports, Politics, and Cultural Transformation" Presented by Dr. Andrei Markovits, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies at the University of Michigan. 6:00 pm Wednesday, November 12th. Dinner and drinks will be available for purchase. RSVP to reserve your spot:
http://www.cos.ucf.edu/dss/rsvp/ While the recent World Cup created a veritable national hysteria in the United States, the game of soccer still remains way behind the North American Big Four of baseball, football, basketball and hockey in terms of its cultural proliferation and popular reception. Why? How did this North American difference arise? Dr. Markovits will highlight how in the course of the late 18th and throughout the 19th centuries, modern sports arose out of previously disparate local games and physical activities. He will then trace how a few team sports played with ball-like contraptions emerged into cultural behemoths that have come to engulf billions of people (still mainly of the male persuasion). By analyzing these constructs in terms of their common class-related and gender-defining identities, the lecture will highlight how our globalized world has both changed former patterns yet continues to maintain old traditions.
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