Global Sports Seminar

This seminar is open to the public.

This seminar examines the modern athlete not simply as a performer, but as a central figure in the intertwined worlds of politics, aesthetics, labor, and the global attention economy. Professional sport has long been framed as entertainment, yet it consistently functions as a site where broader social and geopolitical tensions—over race, nationalism, gender, labor, the nature of beauty and power—are performed, contested, and reimagined.

The series is cochaired by Cemal Kafadar, Vehbi Koç Professor of Turkish Studies and John Stauffer, Sumner R. and Marshall S. Kates Professor of English and of African and African American Studies, with the participation of Stephen Ortega, Professor of History, Emeritus, at Simmons College.