“GOD EXISTS.” A stencil on a building Naples honoring footballer Diego Maradona (Photo – AFP)
About the course
I am leading a 5-week course in Italy in Summer 2026 that explores the deep historical and contemporary connections between sport and cultural expression in Italy. The Rome-based course includes trips to Florence, Assisi, Naples, Pompeii, Sorrento and the island of Capri.
The course looks at sports as a “cultural text” – a set of shared narratives, symbols and rituals – that communicate a society’s values, beliefs and power structures. So we go beyond games, leagues and players to better understand how sports shapes culture.
We will begin with the games and spectacles of ancient Rome. We will visit the Colosseum and Circus Maximus, two sites where Roman values and imperial might were communicated through sports architecture, gladiatorial combat and chariot racing. We’ll learn about former slave Flavius Scorpus, the greatest charioteer of his time, who amassed wealth and power in early imperial Rome.
Our trip to Florence will include discussion of Calcio Fiorentina, a medieval sport that is a violent combination of soccer, rugby and mixed martial arts still played each June on a sand-covered piazza in the city center. Florence was also the home of renowned cyclist Gino Bartali, a two-time Tour de France winner who smuggled illegal documents in the frame of his bike during WWII to help Jewish people hiding in nearby Assisi. We’ll learn more about his story and the role of sports and expression in 1930s and 40s.
Back in Rome, we’ll discuss how brutal dictator Benito Mussolini summoned images of ancient Rome and leveraged sports to help define the values of his fascist regime. We’ll visit the Foro Italico (formerly Foro Mussolini) where designers communicated those ultra-nationalist values through architecture and sports symbolism. There we will visit the Stadio Olimpico, home to famed clubs AS Roma and SS Lazio and one of the great cross-city rivalries in European soccer.
We’ll dig further into the Roma-Lazio rivalry by exploring the ultra (super fan) culture of both teams and how they communicate different versions of romanitá (“Roman-ness”) through chants, graffiti, stadium art and clothing.
We’ll also take those aspects of fan culture and the idea of sport (and particularly soccer or calcio) as a “civil religion” to Naples, where we’ll seek to understand first hand that city’s love affair with Diego Maradona (see image at top), the Argentinian footballing genius who led SSC Napoli to their first two championships in the 1980s. Those championships finally put Napoli on an equal footing with the football giants in northern Italy – like Juventus and AC Milan. Napoli’s story is a great way to understand the historic animosity between Italy’s north and the south and how that is communicated through sport.
Speaking of soccer, we will be in Italy during the men’s World Cup in the United States. So we’ll have a chance to learn more about the globalization of the game and its fandoms thanks to satellite television. Better still, we’ll be able to watch World Cup games in Italy with Italians and fans from around the world who will be in Rome.
Logistics
Tentative travels date are June 21 through July 27. We fly as a group from Philadelphia. Students stay in American University of Rome apartments in the amazing Trastevere neighborhood in Rome. We have overnight stays in Florence (we’ll also go to Assisi on the way and Sorrento (including side trips to Pompeii and Capri). Naples will be a day trip from Rome (about an hour-long train ride). Those trips are included in the cost.
Go to the SJU Center for International Programs (CIP) website for more information on costs, dates, etc.
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