Soccer

Children playing soccer in a brown field

SOCCER/HNRC 4013H-003 (11303)  
W, 2:00-4:30 p.m., Spring 2023
GEAR 129

View Professor Cleveland's Soccer Public Preview Lecture on the Honors College YouTube channel (55 minutes). 

Listen to Professor Cleveland discuss the course on KUAF's Ozarks at Large (20 minutes).

Interested? Current students can apply online. Application deadline: Midnight, Monday, October 31.
Questions?  Contact  John Treat . 

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Soccer is undeniably the world’s most popular sport. Yet, few observers of the game pause to interrogate its unrivaled global popularity. How did soccer generate so many practitioners and followers? From a seemingly innocuous endeavor enjoyed by members of the British working class in the nineteenth century, how did the game subsequently spread throughout the world and come to dominate the global sporting landscape?  Who were the agents of this diffusion? How was the game received, adopted, appropriated, altered or even resisted by various populations worldwide?

This course will prompt students to explore the various historical processes related to the diffusion of and engagement with the sport and to analyze how various geo-historical contexts shaped these processes, as well as the constituent individual experiences of these broader patterns. We will also examine the ways soccer has reflected the broader, ongoing process of globalization, with players, ideas, tactics and wealth circulating throughout the globe, shaping the ways that the game is currently played and consumed, while also considering the future of the game based on these contemporary trends. 

Course Credit:

  • All-students: 3 hours of honors credit
  • Fulbright College:
    • Fulbright Honors humanities or social science colloquium credit
    • Three hours of upper level credit in History (HIST)
    • Three hours of upper level credit in International and Global Studies (INST)
    • Three hours of upper level credit in Physical Education (PHED)
  • Walton College: honors colloquium credit

About Todd Cleveland:

Lynn Jacobs

Professor Cleveland holds a Ph.D. in African History from the University of Minnesota. His research interests are broadly concentrated around the interactions between Europeans and sub-Saharan Africans during the colonial period and, in particular, labor and social relations between the Portuguese and the indigenous populations in the former’s assortment of African territories. Cleveland’s research has been focused on the history of diamond mining in Africa, the history of sports on the continent, and the history of tourism in Africa, and features in six books: Stones of Contention: A History of Africa’s Diamonds (Ohio University Press, 2014); Diamonds in the Rough: Corporate Paternalism and African Professionalism on the Mines of Colonial Angola, 1917-1975 (Ohio University Press, 2015); Following the Ball: The Migration of African Soccer Players across the Portuguese Colonial Empire, 1949-1975 (Ohio University Press, 2017); Sports in Africa, Past and Present, co-edited with Tarminder Kaur and Gerard Akindes (Ohio University Press, 2020); A History of Tourism in Africa: Exoticization, Exploitation, and Enrichment (Ohio University Press, 2021) and Tourism, Empire, and African Labor in Colonial Mozambique, c. 1890-1975 (Cornell University Press, Forthcoming). He is currently working on a book project that examines the history of Africa and the Olympic Games.