The Politics of Sports, SECOND EDITION
Edited by Anna Carroll and Eleanor Wakefield
This Open Educational Resource is a collection of texts and materials that team together students’ familiarity with sports and critical inquiry skills. Sports has an undeniable fascination for cultural studies scholars, and the athletic competition and the social conversations it elicits can help students to see how ethical argumentation plays beyond the walls of the ivory tower. The Politics of Sports, as a broad field of study, is of interest to both scholars and pundits alike. Through inquiry into sports, students can see how debate functions in both academic and public spheres. We have found sports to inspire a wide range of independent research topics in our writing classrooms that challenge students to engage with complex research questions that delve into the social structures that shape what we value and how we act as citizens. Sports is often central to the college experience and ubiquitous in families and communities around the world. The wide variety of audiences interested in sports the personal, economic, and social values tied up in sports invites research writers to think carefully about audience, community, and stakes of argument. We believe that The Politics of Sports has the potential to capture the interest of college students in order to excite them to begin a research journey with a sense of authority and investment in a topic that is at once familiar and complex enough to yield a wide range of inquiry .
In this textbook:
- Preface to the Second Edition, by Anna Carroll and Eleanor Wakefield
- A reading unit introducing the politics of sports as an area of inquiry
- An inquiry unit to begin research into the politics of sports
- Sample writing assignments that prepare students to write and share research essays
Additional teaching material is available upon request by contacting the editors.
