About the Event
Hosted by the Religion, Sport, and Play Unit
At a time when religious studies programs are experiencing declining enrollments, courses that engage religion and sports consistently attract students. Courses on religion and sports can become anchors for departments, generating a pipeline of interested students for your program. Oftentimes, students drawn to these courses are not religious studies majors and are interested in discussing why sport matters to them. The opportunity to critically engage in a cultural topic that resonates with a variety of students is an opportunity to showcase the tools of religious studies and help students see the value of our field. This webinar will equip interested faculty in how to create a religion and sport course, showcase the successes of existing religion and sport courses, and provide information to gain buy-in from your unit.
The subfield of religion and sports has much to offer undergraduate classrooms when it comes to discussions of defining religion (is sport a religion?), religious traditions’ use and/or rejection of sport, transnationalism, capitalism, gender and sexuality, race, as well as key concepts in religious studies like asceticism, ritual, pilgrimage, sacred space, and the body.
Event Guidelines
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Panelists
Annie Blazer is an associate professor of religious studies at William & Mary University. Her courses cover religion in America from the colonial to contemporary period. Blazer’s courses investigate the relationships between religions and American culture, paying attention to race, class, gender, and sexuality. Professor Blazer’s first book, Playing for God: Evangelical Women and the Unintended Consequences of Sports Ministry (NYU Press), was released in July 2015. The book is an ethnographic exploration of the religious experiences of Christian athletes in the U.S. Professor Blazer’s current research project investigates the effects of gentrification and re-urbanization on religious communities and focuses on the East End of Richmond, Virginia.
Paul Putz is assistant professor of Christianity and Sports, holder of the Harold and Dottie Riley Chair in Sports Ministry and Chaplaincy, and director of the Faith & Sports Institute at Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University. Paul launched the Faith & Sports Institute’s Online Certificate Program, which has enrolled more than 225 students worldwide; led the creation of the MA in Theology and Sports Studies; and served as conference director for the fourth Global Congress on Sports and Christianity. His first book, The Spirit of the Game: American Christianity and Big-Time Sports (Oxford University Press, 2024), was awarded the Brewer Prize from the American Society of Church History.
Steven Waller is Professor and Associate Department Head, Kinesiology, Recreation, and Sport Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He serves on the Diversity and Engagement Faculty Advisory Board; Chair of the Mentoring Committee of the College of Health and Human Sciences; and Co-Editor of the Journal of the Christian Society for Kinesiology, Leisure and Sport Studies. Steven has published numerous articles on topics ranging from race and sports to the cultural impact of public swimming pools.
Zachary Smith is currently Assistant Teaching Professor of Kinesiology at the School of Behavioral Sciences and Education at Penn State University, Harrisburg. Zach is a scholar of religion and physical culture with graduate degrees in religious studies and kinesiology/sport studies. His primary research agenda attends to the cultural politics that emerge at the nexus of two of the most powerful forms of cult. He is working on a book titled Fight Church which examines the cultural politics of Christian combatives and fight sports ministries in the United States.
Megan Robb is an Associate Professor in Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a historian of Islam and gender in South Asia. She presses on issues that illuminate the religious identity of Muslims in the 20th century and adds attention to material texts to studies of Urdu journalism. Megan has a substantial research interest in comparative approaches to the connection between religion and sport in South Asia and North America.
Moderator
Terry Shoemaker is Associate Teaching Professor at the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. Terry is a qualitative research scholar attentive to religion trends in contemporary life in the United States. This includes the ways that religion and religious people sociologically adapt, convert, deconvert, reform, and abandon aspects of their religiosity or spirituality. Specifically, he theorizes how people conceptualize the sacred elements of human experience. Shoemaker’s book, Religions and Sports: The Basics, provides an introductory text for how to understand the many relationships between religion and sports, and how to study the two phenomena.
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