This course examines images of athletes and athletics as they are rhetorically constructed in contemporary popular culture. Students will analyze how various cultural texts (such as magazine covers, advertisements, television shows, films, or video games) communicate what it means to be an athlete in both the U.S. and internationally. The course will examine how these images have changed historically and how depictions of gender, race, class, and sexual identity also contribute to our understandings of what it means to be an athlete in popular culture.