By Agustina Carrizo‬

From Spain to Cambridge, Mass., and now to Isla Vista, California, UC Santa Barbara literature and film professor Eloi Grasset has taught a variety of students from many backgrounds. Grasset has been teaching in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at UCSB since 2015. Previously, he was a lecturer at Harvard University and also taught at the University of Barcelona for five‬ years.

Eloi Grasset, a UCSB Spanish literature and film professor, discusses his varied teaching areas, including his Cultural Studies course on soccer in the Hispanic world.

Grasset is now applying his vast knowledge of Spanish and Iberian culture to new, broad-appeal general education course taught in English: Soccer in the Hispanic World. Fifty students have signed up. Grasset recently spoke about this‬ innovative course, and how it can help students to build skill in cultural studies.‬

Q: When did you start teaching this course about soccer, or fútbol, as it’s known abroad?‬

A:‬ Initially it was just about Spain, and it was upper division. This course was taught in Spanish,‬ so I included a lot of things in Spanish. One of the difficulties of transforming this course into a‬ GE course was finding new materials and trying to adapt it. I try to make it easier and‬ enjoyable.‬

Q: How do you think learning about soccer can help students understand the Hispanic‬ world and its culture?‬

A:‬ You can actually see through this course that not everywhere things are done the same way.‬ That’s why I try to diversify, and to show you different things. We were working with‬ materials from Spain, but also from Argentina, and also Colombia. I like to show that it depends‬ on context. To understand the particularities of the game, you have to take into account the context, where it takes place.

This is why humanities are still important, because to have a‬ nuanced understanding of the world, you have to go back to these rooted and particular‬ experiences. If you want to talk about soccer, it’s not the same if you are talking about Italy,‬ Germany, or Latin America. It helps me to build up these categories that has to do with the‬ language in order to identify certain similarities between these places. In that sense, it’s helpful‬ or those who are not familiar with these cultures or the Hispanic world to understand the‬ diversity, which is important to keep in mind when analyzing that not everywhere things are‬ done the same way. Soccer is just an example.

Q: You also teach in the Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies programs at UCSB. What other courses have you taught in the past or you are currently teaching?‬

A:‬ All the courses I’ve been teaching during all these years are related to Hispanic/Iberian‬ culture. I also teach on Catalan culture, and I have this course on Barcelona that I’m teaching‬ next year in the fall. I also teach courses more focused on specific literature, and then later on, I developed interest in cultural studies, something more connected to what I am doing right now in this course. Cinema is also a major thing in my‬ research, so I focus on Spanish cinema and cinema in general as well.‬‬

Q: Do you find this class on sports culture more interesting to teach than others? And if so, why?‬

A:‬ That’s a good question. One of the miracles of this job is that you can talk about what you‬ like. Especially in the humanities, because you are somehow personally connected to what‬ you do. So, it’s not something that you do as a job, but it’s also a part of your personal‬ experience. In this sense, all the courses that I teach are somehow connected to me, what I do,‬ who I am. But it’s fun to talk about something that is a bit different, because the approach you‬ can offer is not common. So, you get the students that are attracted to the topic, because it’s‬ something new. The relationship you develop with your students is a little bit different, and it’s interesting.‬

Q: Have you found that students seem more interested in this class compared to other more traditional courses‬ you have taught?‬

A:‬ I like the way the students can relate to the topic, even if not all of them are interested‬ specifically in soccer… If you have a connection that is there from the very beginning, then it’s easier to have them conceptualize ideas. So, in a broad sense, I would say that yes, students seem more interested in this kind of course. …using something that they know beforehand, it’s easier for you to let them see what‬ the relevance is...I would say half of the whole class is genuinely interested in the game.‬

Q: What do you hope that students‬ will take away from a course about soccer?‬

A:‬ What’s good about cultural studies is that you can go to your own experiences — and this is‬ something that artificial intelligence cannot help you understand ...The course is not just about soccer — I mean this is the excuse of course— but we have many other things that we can talk about. Like how to transform this personal experience into knowledge‬. That’s why it’s interesting to focus on experiences, and to somehow at least take into account what we have been through and to develop our knowledge and the capacity to create an argument, to develop ideas about a topic. It is one of the main goals of the‬ whole course.‬

Agustina Carrizo is a third-year English major aiming to pursue the Professional Writing Minor.