Why do humans engage in combat sports? And why was wrestling our first sport, followed quickly by boxing? Scholars of antiquity claim that this was to honour the gods. Experts on today's professional wrestling contend that it satisfies our need for melodrama. In this course, we will examine fighting's historical arc, asking ourselves why its delirious mixture of violence, competition, and sex has captured our imagination since the beginning of time. When ancient cultures made grappling their first sport, they aimed to stage and contain their most primitive urges: two people embraced aggressively yet did not try to kill or rape the other. The strangeness of this attracted observers and explains why wrestling to this day still draws crowds — and participants — from across humanity.

We will analyze historical artefacts, literature, and visual art — beginning with accounts of hand-to-hand combat among the world's major gods and heroes: Gilgamesh, Heracles, Odysseus, Krishna, and Muhammad. We will discuss Jacob's wrestling in the Bible, as well as Socrates, Plato, and the most famous protagonists of medieval literature: Beowulf and Siegfried. Even the Miller in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is known for his "wrastlynge." We will engage with indigenous traditions and African literature and study the female fighters who have subverted the masculinist stereotype: Atalanta, Palaistra (the Greek goddess of wrestling), the mighty Brunhild, and today's women's MMA and Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW). Theoretical texts by Plato, Roland Barthes, and Jennifer Doyle will augment our analyses. The aim is to catalyze new thinking about sport, combat, and civilization itself.