Fall 2025, Wednesdays, 5:00-8:00PM; MEETs AT MIT

Given the Eurocentric, colonial, white supremacist, and heteropatriarchal structures of modern sport, it is no surprise that sport plays a central role in naturalizing hierarchies of bodies and producing racialized and gendered norms.  Drawing on various fields like Black Studies, queer theory, trans studies, disability studies, sport communication; media studies, critical geography, and decolonial and anti-colonial thought, this course introduces students to the gendered and sexual dynamics of sport, as well as the racialized gender policing that occurs within the sporting world.  Students will explore how amateur and professional sports aid in the formation of social classes, national and racial identities, sexuality, and gender roles in places like Canada, the U.S., Senegal, South Africa, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Brazil, Dominican Republic, and Japan.  Key topics and case studies include: the rise of trans moral panics in sport; Indigenous and anti-colonial resistance to sport “mega-events”; the politics of protest and patriotism in the sporting arena; the ways that legal, medical, and scientific discourses in global sport produce and reproduce power relations; anti-Black media representations of Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka; and, finally, what Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift’s relationship might teach us about celebrity culture and its relation to dominant views of race, masculinity, and femininity.  Throughout the course, we will also examine how hegemonic portrayals of masculinity structures U.S. sports’ entanglement with militarism and neoliberalism, and, more broadly, how gender and sexuality are deployed in service of colonialism, racism, and U.S. imperialism.  

Faculty

Roberto Sirvent, JD, PhD, is a political theorist who studies race, law, and social movements. He also works at the intersection of ethics, philosophy of religion, and science and technology studies (STS). Roberto's research considers how Marxist, psychoanalytic, and anarchist frameworks can inform debates in bioethics, public health, and environmental justice. Central to his scholarly interests are the ways that colonialism, imperialism, and US militarism fuel various health injustices and ecological crises around the globe. Roberto is especially interested in helping bioethics professionals find creative ways to engage the theoretical work of disability justice advocates, queer and trans liberation movements, Black Studies scholars, mutual aid networks, and anti-colonial revolutionary struggles.

Roberto's current research examines the prevalence of medical neglect, abuse, and torture in prisons and migrant detention centers. He is also working on a community resource guide exploring the intersection of education policy, critical pedagogy, and students' mental health, as well as a study that draws on theories of libidinal economy and the "psychopolitics of race" to address recent controversies in sports and bioethics. Some of Roberto's most recent scholarship invites students of comics and graphic medicine to consider how narratives of slave revolts and prison rebellions contribute to Black liberation struggles for health justice. His work in clinical ethics explores how anti-Black racism functions in Latinx and Latin American communities and the impact it has on everyday clinical encounters between patients, doctors, and other medical professionals.

Roberto received an MA from Johns Hopkins University, a JD from the University of Maryland School of Law, and a PhD from the London School of Theology (UK). Before joining Harvard Medical School, Roberto taught ethics and Latinx studies at Yale, where he also served as an Affiliate Scholar at the school's Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and Founding Director of the Race, Bioethics, and Public Health Project. In addition to Yale, he has taught at Barnard College, Pomona College, Scripps College, and Hope International University (HIU). At HIU, Roberto served as Professor of Political and Social Ethics, Chair of the Social Sciences Department, and Director of the Center for Public Leadership.