Today was a heavy teaching day. I taught two classes in the morning, and in the early evening I started teaching my honors colloquium, “How Soccer Explains the World.” My sense is that classes are off to a good start. The students seem to be on top of things, especially good at the beginning of the semester before things get hectic with the traveling that students will be doing. Several of my colloquium students know little about soccer other than the basics, so on Wednesday evening we’ll be watching Champions League soccer together at the house. I am hoping that the collective experience will bring some of the students less familiar with the game into the fold. Beyond actually watching soccer and learning more about soccer strategy, I am planning to spend some time exploring with students the idea of how soccer functions as a form of civil religion in places like the UK. Students will read some of the influential literature on the topic (Durkheim on religion; Robert Bellah on American civil religion). We’ll see where this reading might lead our discussion. Alongside this, Franklin Foer’s book How Soccer Explains the World offers some vivid examples of the ways that the football world intersects with broader patterns of globalization. Lots to discuss there as well, and that’s not even talking about the experience of watching actual football.
But enough of football. This evening I walked with a large group of our students to a nearby park where the students played a rousing game of kickball. It’s been a lot of fun watching student relationships begin to gel at the house. The students seem genuinely in to spending time together. It was a real pleasure standing back and taking in the fun of watching American college students play a game that most of them played in elementary school. The park had a fair number of passersby stopping and staring, curious expressions on their faces. I carried on an extended conversation with four foreigners sitting on a bench, clearly enjoying the spectacle. The Italian father and his daughter were there with two friends from Spain, renting a longboat on the Oxford canal for a weeklong vacation. They picked up pretty quickly that the game resembled American baseball. Observing the bad timing, the dropped balls, and the flailing attempts to get players out, the father remarked to me, “Clearly these students have been spending too much time in the classroom.” Perhaps he is right. But students, I do expect to see you in class this Wednesday. Priorities, priorities.
Tomorrow I continue my Thames River Ramble, from Wallingford to Tilehurst. Onward!
Return home…