In 1945, after the visit of a Soviet soccer team to England, George Orwell was so shaken by the viciousness he witnessed on the field and in the crowd that he declared international sport to be, in essence, “war minus the shooting.” This judgment stood in stark contrast to the idealistic hope of Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games, that a quadrennial festival bringing together the youth of the world in friendly competition could promote cooperation and instill an ethic of global peace. Coubertin fetishized amateurism, celebrated the example of the ancient Greeks, and tried his utmost to prevent women from participating. Today, the competition he founded is a multi-billion-dollar spectacle backed by corporate sponsors and state investment, beset by constant allegations of cheating, and liable at any moment to erupt into a geopolitical incident.
By learning about the evolution of the Olympics since 1896, we can investigate in microcosm all the key themes of modern history: the growing power of the state over the lives of its citizens, the promises and perils of technological development, conflict between countries with opposing ideologies, changing ideas about the position of women in society, the relationships of independent countries in Africa and Asia with the European powers that once colonized them, and the struggle by people from non-white racial backgrounds to be treated as full equals.
This course explores the history of the modern Olympic Games from their revival in 1896 up to the present day. This course is taught at an introductory level and assumes no previous background in history.
In sports history courses such as this one, the goal is not to focus on individual performances, but to ask how athletic competition reflected broader social trends, geopolitical rivalries, and historical changes. Consequently, many extraordinary athletes who have become household names—people like Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, Simone Biles, and Katie Ledecky—will come up in this course only in passing, or not at all. Instead, you’ll get introduced to some athletes who are less famous, and who in some cases were entirely unsuccessful in Olympic competition, but whose stories allow us to dig into key themes. Among the characters you will meet in this course will be: a swimmer who won medals for the U.S. despite having been born a citizen of the Kingdom of Hawaii, and whose soaring popularity earned him invitations to compete in pools that had previously been restricted to whites; a champion backstroker who, having been deemed the prettiest woman at the games by a sexist press, provoked a nationwide furor when she was then dismissed from the team for having had the audacity to drink too much champagne; a decathlete who embodied the hopes of the island of Taiwan until he failed on the highest stage under suspicious circumstances; an American hammer thrower and a Czech discus thrower who found love across the Iron Curtain; and a retired middle distance runner who called for black Americans to boycott the Olympics even though he was employed as a diplomat representing the United States in Africa.
By the end of this course, you will have a broad familiarity with the history of the modern Olympic Games. You will understand how international rivalries played out in athletic competition. You will learn how different understandings of race, gender, and empire shaped the evolution of the Olympics. You will gain an appreciation for the way scholars use sports as a way to shed light on broader themes in political and social history. And you will have read or watched primary sources in a variety of genres and formats (official documents, memoirs, periodicals, film, oral histories, political cartoons, and even a TV sitcom) by creators from five different continents.
The Opening Ceremony for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo will take place on February 6, which is almost exactly the halfway point of the UW’s Winter Quarter. The competition will last for just over two weeks. Whatever happens in Milan and Cortina will, of course, not be part of the content that you will be expected to learn for this history course. But I will make frequent reference to the 2026 Winter Olympics throughout the quarter, in the expectation that learning about the history of the Olympics will help you to understand the most recent iteration of that competition.
Students will be graded on a midterm exam, a final exam, a reading annotation assignment, and a written assignment that involves analyzing an Olympic event of their choice.