In "Sports, Media & Society," we approached sports as a social institution, just as one would education or religion. The role of sports in identity formation particularly proved a central theme in the course. Media, of course, was another. In fact, Professor LaMay often referred to the subject of the course as “mediasport” – an emerging term in recent academic scholarship that reflects the fundamental interconnectedness of sports and media. The course precisely explored this interconnectedness, from sports as a media product to sports as a medium for nationalism. By examining sporting cultures across various geographic contexts, we were also able to use sports, or rather mediasport, as a deeper lens into these respective societies, including commerce and industry, domestic and international politics (even war), gender and sex identities, religion and spirituality, racial and ethnic relations, and popular culture.

The latter two, specifically within an American context, proved especially important to my research. While Professor LaMay effectively navigated between various countries for a more comprehensive survey of the course, he tended to revert back often to the United States, which allowed me to narrow down on the concepts introduced. The unit that actually centered on sports in the United States, titled “Sport and National Narrative II: Britain and the United States,” provided me with considerable knowledge about the American sport complex that would prove integral in developing my argument about its contribution to Negrophilia in American popular culture. The reading on the “Great American Sports Myth,” specifically the “widespread belief that all sports are essentially pure and good, and that their purity and goodness are transferred to those who participate,” for example, often cited the historical and contemporary treatment of African-American athletes to challenge this belief. Once I became familiar with the ‘myth of post-racial America’ later in another course, I was further able to make substantive parallels between these two societal illusions, allowing me to effectively synthesize my research across disciplines into a structured argument. The unit on race and ethnicity similarly drew parallels to discussions of biological racism that I would encounter in other courses. In this regard, I was able to apply examples provided in this unit to concepts that would compose much of my theoretical framework for my thesis.

On a technical level, the course’s assignments enhanced the critical skills I would later apply to my thesis. Our first major assignment was a national sports profile on a country of our choice; I chose Argentina as I was largely unfamiliar with its sporting culture. Rather than approach this assignment as a descriptive report, however, I chose to approach it as more of a sociological study, such as how gender inequality in Argentinian sports stems from deeply entrenched macho attitudes in Argentinian society. This approach to sports as a microcosm of society would serve as a model for my thesis’s examination of how American sports exemplifies contradictory racial attitudes within American society. Our second major assignment was a debate on whether media networks have a moral/social responsibility to give women’s sports primetime coverage; my group assumed the oppositional position. Preparing for the debate proved largely a process of assessing and synthesizing data and media examples – a process I would emulate in conducting my own research.