From stadiums roaring with thousands to solitary runners on empty roads, sport is as much a story as it is a competition. Literature and Sports invites students to explore how writers transform games, athletes, and moments of victory and defeat into powerful narratives about what it means to be human. Across genres like fiction, memoir, journalism, poetry, and cultural criticism, sports narratives raise key questions about human values.
Rather than seeing sports writing as entertainment, we’ll approach it as a site for exploring fairness, excellence, identity, class, and nation. Students will engage with texts that celebrate triumphs and confront controversies, examining the balance between spectacle and labor, passion and profit. The course will challenge students to critically assess their own values and understand how sports reflect and shape broader cultural and ethical ideas. Assignments focus on close reading, critical writing, and creative engagement with sports narratives.
