Learn Sports and Society online for free from Duke University

This course explores the role of sports around the world, and how the games we watch and play shape identity, culture, and society.

Duke University and Coursera offers this online course.

About the course:
Sports play a giant role in contemporary society worldwide. But few of us pause to think about the larger questions of money, politics, race, sex, culture, and commercialization that surround sports everywhere.

This course draws on the tools of anthropology, sociology, history, and other disciplines to give you new perspectives on the games we watch and play. We will focus on both popular sports like soccer (or "football," as anyone outside America calls it), basketball, and baseball, and also lesser-known ones like mountain-climbing and fishing.

The course features special guest lectures about the Olympics, skateboarding, and the Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira. We will also have Google Hangouts with several prominent figures from the sports and sports studies world (guests last time the course was offered included former major league baseball player and ESPN commentator Doug Glanville; the German soccer star and gay rights spokesperson Thomas Hitzlsperger; and leading sports journalist Selena Roberts). You will never watch or think about sports in the same way again.

• Duration: 7 weeks of study.
• Timings: 3 to 5 hours of work / week.

To apply, click here.