Even as news about the Sociology of Jay-Z course at Georgetown continues to spread, I ran into news about a sociology course about professional wrestling:

On Oct. 16, professional wrestling came to Brock University with the third annual “Brock Brawl”. The live pro wrestling event not only served as entertainment for members of the Brock community, it also represented a learning experience for students at Brock enrolled in the SOCI 3P55 course, also known as, “The Sociology of Professional Wrestling”.

Daniel Glenday, a Professor in the Department of Sociology, teaches Sociology (SOCI) 3P55 at Brock, which is the only course offered in North America that purely focuses on pro wrestling.

“The idea of this course is to ‘wise people up’ to wrestling,” said Glenday. “It’s a big part of cultures all around the world, but no one is studying it. It’s everywhere, so we should really take a look at what it means.”…

The Sociology of Professional Wrestling was first offered at Brock in 2006. Glenday said the course addresses the misunderstandings and prejudices people have towards pro wrestling, which has been criticized for its “excessive violence, sexism, homophobia and ethnic/racial stereotyping”. Glenday also hopes to dismiss the argument that pro wrestling leads to an increase in bullying by younger girls and boys.

I assume there would a lot of material to work with in this course regarding masculinity, violence, and popular culture.

Is professional wrestling still popular? I know it is still on the air but I haven’t seen many commercials for it or heard about it leaking out into the popular culture. One website suggests the October 10th Monday Night Raw pulled down a rating of 3.2 and the latest “Impact Wrestling” (Thu Oct 13) had a 0.5 rating (better than “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”). Perhaps I am in the wrong target demographic and/or am not watching the right channels.