Soccer -known as fútbol in Spanish or futebol in Portuguese- is the most popular sport in the world. This survey course will use soccer as a lens to study the development of modern Latin American history, culture, and politics through its representations in literature, journalism, and film and television (the 1860s-2018). This is a class on the cultural, social, and political impact and uses of one sport in one of the most unequal regions of our modern-day world. This course will trace the trajectory of both the sport and the Latin American societies that received and molded soccer into the cultural force that it is today. Football has been used to fabricate national identities, promote multi-racial societies, and, of course, entertain the masses. We will explore these facets of its impact on twentieth-century Latin American history while acknowledging the more odious use of the sport in upholding dictatorships, drug trafficking, and misogyny.

This class counts toward the Spanish major and as literature credit toward the Spanish minor.

Class Format:

During certain periods of the term, we will have an “in-person day” with large discussions about the course content; during other periods of the term, we will have an "online day" where students collaborate in small-group activities via Canvas and Zoom and complete asynchronous assignments.