Whether you call it soccer, football or futebol the beautiful game with the round ball is played and watched around the world. This class will explore how and why that came to happen. Along the way it will trace key developments in the game such as the formation of clubs, international tournaments, the development of stadiums, fan culture, media coverage, formations and styles of play, gambling and corruption, the working conditions and wages of players. We will locate these changes in broader historical processes – political, economic, social and cultural - that have transformed the game and made it a global commodity. The class will teach you both about the game and about thinking historically and how the world changes over time.

Whether you call it soccer, football or fútbol the beautiful game with the round ball is played and watched around the world. This class will explore how and why that came to happen. Along the way it will trace key developments in the game such as the formation of clubs, governing bodies, international tournaments, the development of stadiums, fan culture and violence, media coverage, formations, styles of play, gambling, corruption, the working conditions of players, referees and the absurdity of VAR. Although I am a massive fan the point of the class is not to nerd out but to locate these changes in broader historical processes—political, economic, social and cultural—that have transformed the game and made it a global commodity. Broadly speaking the class follows how since the middle of the nineteenth century the game was shaped by the history of capitalism and its alternatives, as well as by the formation of nation states, empires, internationalism, regionalism, and globalization. Throughout the way the game was played and watched remained inseparable from our understanding of gender, class, ethnicity, race and religion. Ideally the class will teach you both a lot about the game and about thinking historically and how the world changes over time. There is a required and relatively cheap textbook that is not available online and occasional shorter pieces that are available online. Assessment as follows: a) 15% for lecture quizzes. There will be a question about each lecture on bCourses that students will need to respond to briefly within 24 hours of class time. b) 20% for discussion section participation. c) 25% for 6 bi-weekly quizzes (counting your best 5 quiz results). These quizzes are designed to assess your grasp of some of the key concepts that the class is organized around (ie. not who did what when and where but what concepts can we use to explain why or how it happened). d) 40% for either take-home final exam or two blog posts.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills