91AV

For more than 15 years, the 91AV Center for Global Humanities (CGH) has treated audiences of students and community members to events that offer occasion to gather and think deeply about a topic. Until now, these events have been held almost exclusively on the University’s Portland Campus for the Health Sciences. Now, the CGH is expanding to Biddeford, where the majority of 91AV’s undergraduate students reside. 

CGH Director Josh Pahigian, M.F.A.,  that the first of these events would feature University of Kansas scholar Sayvon JL Foster for a lecture titled, “How College Athletics Shape Culture and Community,” on Wednesday, Oct. 23, at 6 p.m. at the Harold Alfond Forum.   

“We have witnessed steadily growing crowds of 91AV students, faculty, and professional staff attending our President’s Forum series events in Biddeford,” Pahigian explained. “The time is right for us to bring CGH’s thought-provoking programming to Biddeford.”

Currently, the Center plans to host one lecture per semester in Biddeford. It will continue to offer a least four events per semester in Portland. 

“This first event presents a tremendous opportunity for us,” Pahigian said. “I think our student-athletes, sport leadership and management majors, and sociology majors will find Professor Foster’s work both interesting and inspiring.” 

Foster’s lecture will discuss the extent to which college athletics shape student communities and the broader communities surrounding our nation’s campuses through the transmission of norms, values, and culture. The lecture will pay special attention to fan experience, athlete experience, and organizational culture. 

An assistant professor of sport management at the University of Kansas, Foster’s research crosses into sport sociology, where he specializes in athletics of historically Black college and universities, college sport culture, and college athlete experience and development. He takes a practical and liberatory stance that centers accessibility, understanding, and justice. He is the founder of Kansas’s Sport Experience at Special Mission Institutions Research Lab, which applies rigorous and accessible scholarship to better understand sport at special mission institutions and their communities. 

Foster has published his findings in the Sociology of Sport Journal, Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics, Innovative Higher Education, and the Journal of Athlete Development and Experience. He has also presented at multiple national and international conferences, notably the North American Society for Sport Management, the College Sport Research Institute, and the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport. He recently chatted with Pahigian about his work on the  podcast.

This will be the second of five events this fall at the Center for Global Humanities, where lectures are always free, open to the public, and streamed live online. For more information and to attend the event, please visit the Center for Global Humanities website.