Today I wrapped up my second go around with Global Sports Cultures (a/k/a Comparative Literature 100) with a final lecture on free running, specifically on the youth group known as PK Gaza.
Throughout the semester we’ve been using a variety of lenses to look at the intersection between sports, society, and culture (including art). In the process, I introduced the idea of the “sports machine” to refer to this complex and to get students to think pragmatically and critically about what they use this machine for and how they might engage it in ways that maximize its positive outputs while minimizing, or at least becoming more conscious of, its negative byproducts.
I wanted to use the example of free running as a way to suggest what I think of as one exemplary way, if not to fix the sports machine (as I provocatively titled my lecture), then at least to operate within it in a way that augments the possibilities for human freedom, joy, and beauty that sports promises and can deliver. Students viewed a video that PK Gaza posted (which I show in the lecture below) and read some journalistic and scholarly accounts of parkour and free running.
I think the lecture is pretty self-contained, but if you there are some references to previous lectures, most of which you can find here (I still have one from last week to add, on power and autonomy at the 1968 Summer Olympics).
I was very proud of this lecture, which I felt really did a great job of tying together and shedding new light on a number of recurrent themes from the course, while leaving students with some thought provoking challenges to take with them.
Here is the link to the lecture.