The Olympics have been used to promote racist regimes. Athletes have used them to promote social movements and businesses have turned the Games into corporate sport. All these have occurred despite the conception of the Games as an apolitical athletic festival for amateurs. To understanding these discrepancies, the Olympics must be viewed from an interdisciplinary perspective. In this class, the Olympics will be viewed as an intersection among the disciplines of exercise science, sociology, political science, and history.
Exercise science provides an insight on the accomplishment of elite human performance.
Sociology gives us at way to look at the Olympics as a social institution. The use of power in and through sport is best understood through political science. Finally, history links all of these disciplines in a context. The class will focus on only the summer Games for three reasons. First, more events are held in the summer and more countries participate.