University of St Andrews

Key information

SCOTCAT credits : 30

ECTS credits : 15

Level : SCQF level 10

Semester: 1

Availability restrictions: Not automatically available to General Degree students

Planned timetable: 2.00 pm - 5.00 pm Mon (film viewing), 2.00 pm - 4.00 pm Fri (class)

This module will look at literary and cinematic representations of sport in the twentieth and twenty first century. We will cover fiction and non-fiction writing, as well as both documentary and narrative cinema, from North America, Europe and Asia. We will explore the connections and intersections between sport and race, gender, nationalism, war and violence, empire and capitalism. We will conceptualise sport as competition, redemption, oppression, obsession and enterprise. From major big-budget Hollywood movies to alternative, independent documentary cinema; from canonical novelists to critically neglected authors - sport has been represented in a large variety of cultural texts. It is at once all-pervasive in society and far too often trivialised as unimportant or simplistic. This module will interrogate these positions and recover the phenomenon of sport and its cultural legacies as a subject worthy of study.

Relationship to other modules

Pre-requisite(s): Before taking this module you must pass EN2003 and pass EN2004

Learning and teaching methods and delivery

Weekly contact: One 2-hour class, one 3-hour film screening session, and two optional consultation hours.

Assessment pattern

As used by St Andrews: Coursework = 100%

Personnel

Module coordinator: Dr A Raychaudhuri
Module teaching staff: Dr Anindya Raychaudhuri
Module coordinator email ar220@st-andrews.ac.uk

Intended learning outcomes

• Demonstrate a broad knowledge of the themes, concerns and topics of the literature and cinema of sport.
• Discuss literary and cinematic representations of sport in their historical and socio-political contexts.
• Discuss issues such as gendered, racial, and national identities, capitalism and commercialization of sport, obsession, industry, empire and violence.
• Research and write on the subject of literature and sport.