Ethan Sherwood Strauss, sportswriter (and fellow Golden Bear) covering the NBA for The Athletic, visits the class.
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Whether you play, watch, or try to ignore it, sport is woven into our daily lives. In this class, we read some of the very best sports journalism with a critical lens. In so doing, we examined intersections between business, race, culture, disability, gender, performance, technology, politics, social justice, and above all else attention to inquiry through thoughtful writing.
In what ways can each sport be considered its own culture, with distinct rituals, language, costumes, imagery and relationship networks? What’s interesting about the way sports bodies are transformed under the spectator’s gaze – especially when those bodies are thought to have an advantage based on sex, race, gender or disability? What constitutes “greatness” in the context of time, aging, and the marketing of self? And how do we start to understand the political, technological, and social trap that athletes find themselves in when asked to be role models and cultural symbols -- but not to speak?
Many thanks to U.C. Berkeley's College Writing Programs and the Art of Writing program at the Townsend Center for the Humanities, which co-sponsored this new writing seminar. Thanks as well to our three excellent guest speakers: Nam Le, Ethan Sherwood Strauss, and Joan Ryan. Thanks most of all to our students, who experimented, revised, and challenged themselves as writers.
Explore and enjoy a sampling of the work created in this course!
- Ryan Sloan & Michael Larkin, December 2018
In what ways can each sport be considered its own culture, with distinct rituals, language, costumes, imagery and relationship networks? What’s interesting about the way sports bodies are transformed under the spectator’s gaze – especially when those bodies are thought to have an advantage based on sex, race, gender or disability? What constitutes “greatness” in the context of time, aging, and the marketing of self? And how do we start to understand the political, technological, and social trap that athletes find themselves in when asked to be role models and cultural symbols -- but not to speak?
Many thanks to U.C. Berkeley's College Writing Programs and the Art of Writing program at the Townsend Center for the Humanities, which co-sponsored this new writing seminar. Thanks as well to our three excellent guest speakers: Nam Le, Ethan Sherwood Strauss, and Joan Ryan. Thanks most of all to our students, who experimented, revised, and challenged themselves as writers.
Explore and enjoy a sampling of the work created in this course!
- Ryan Sloan & Michael Larkin, December 2018