SSI associate and anthropology graduate student Frances Sutton has been active in studying sports and society issues during the pandemic, including an anthropological perspective with Prof. Jeffrey H. Cohen exploring the disorientation fans feel without their sports rituals and fan communities.

Sutton also organized and facilitated an online workshop July 8 about teaching the sociology of sport in the midst of the pandemic. Sutton invited members of the North American Society for the Sociology Sport to participate in a Zoom workshop, where members could share advice and best practices for teaching sport sociology with a focus on hybrid and online teaching skills.

In the first part of the two-hour event, Sutton organized participants into small groups to discuss pedagogy using discussion questions that participants had submitted. In the second part of the event, Dr. Christina Gipson or Georgia Southern University, Dr. Nik Dickerson of the University of Lincoln, Dr. Karen Weiller-Abels of the University of North Texas, and Dr. Adriana Sekulovic of California Lutheran University discussed best practices for teaching sport sociology and answered questions.

Sutton used the workshop as an opportunity to establish a shared online drive for teaching resources among NASSS members. Members can use the drive to share teaching materials, offer advice, and recommend course content ideas. 

Finally, this month, Sutton was invited to appear on PBS Chicago where she discussed her work on fandom and how sports have always been the site of political conversations. As part of this, she participated in an analysis of the return to sports.

Frances Sutton is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology and has received SSI funding for her research on Muslim and Arab American women's sports involvement. For more information about the NASSS teaching resource drive or follow up teaching events, you can contact her at Sutton.373@osu.edu.