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Zoe Weinstein

Determining relevant databases

All databases in our Find Databases page also have a short description that can help you determine if the database will be useful to you. 

For projects in English, Literature, and Textual Studies we recommend the following starting points:

• Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window This is a general database and provides a good starting point to search across multiple disciplines.
• MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window Scholarly articles, journals, books and dissertations covering topics in literature, modern languages, linguistics, folklore, and dramatic arts as well as the historical aspects of printing and publishing.
• JSTOR This link opens in a new window Archive of scholarly journals and ebooks spanning many disciplines, primarily in the humanities and social sciences. Often does not have the last 1-3 years of a publication. Use Advanced Search to select specific subject areas or upload a relevant article to the Text Analyzer to see what JSTOR suggests.
• Project MUSE This link opens in a new window Excellent collection of hundreds of scholarly humanities and social sciences journals. All articles are available in full text. Good for more niche topics or for finding material published by university presses.
• Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels This link opens in a new window Comics have become an increasingly popular area of academic study; Underground and Independent Comics provides this resource, collecting thousands of comics—many extremely rare and hard to find—in one, easy-to-use online collection. Covers major works from North America and Europe, beginning with the first underground comix from the 1950s and continuing through to modern sequential artists as well as the pre-Comics Code era of horror, crime, romance, and war comics that fueled the backlash leading to the advent of the Comics Code. Database available through at least May 31, 2024, as part of  ProQuest's Evidence-Based Acquisition Program .

Determining if an article is relevant to your research

Articles can be as short as one paragraph or as long as 20 pages or more. Knowing how to determine if an article is relevant to your research can significantly cut down on your research time.

Step 1: Read the Subject Terms

Subject Terms, Subjects, Key Terms, Thesaurus, this section has many names, but is generally a list of terms, some of which you may have used to find the article! This list will give you an at-a-glance idea of what the article covers and is the shortest and fastest way to get accurate information on the content of the article. Why not the title? See below this list for why!

Step 2: Read the Abstract

An abstract is a summary of an article, sometimes written by the author, other times by the publisher. These abstracts are rarely more than a paragraph long and give you a more detailed idea of what the article will cover, including methodology, any statistical information, general thesis, and sometimes also some indication of the conclusion or findings. If the contents of the abstract feel over your head or more technical than you need keep in mind the article will probably follow suit. 

Step 3: Skim the Article

There's still sometimes no need to deep dive into a chapter until you've determined its relevancy. Try skimming the article by reading the introduction and conclusion as well as the first sentence or two of each paragraph. This doesn't always work! Depending on the topic you may need to skip to step 4...

Step 4: Read Closely

Now is the time to read closely; taking notes is recommended but you may have your own research method you prefer!

Why not use the title to determine if the article is relevant? 

Sometimes the title will tell you exactly what an article is about! But sometimes it is, essentially, an ad. Just like any author, article authors would like you to read their work, and so sometimes create fun or cute titles that attract clicks but may not indicate the actual context or content of the article. We recommend reading the title and incorporating it into your research process as best you can!

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How to Write the Brandeis University Essays 2023-2024

Founded in 1948 by the American Jewish community, Brandeis has provided world-class educations to historically-discriminated groups in education like Jews, racial minorities, and women. Despite its religious foundations, the university is non-sectarian and welcomes students of all (or none) faiths. Now, Brandeis is consistently ranked as a top 50 university in the country and is well known for its Heller School of Social Policy and Management.

Brandeis only requires general applicants to submit one essay; however, international students and students applying to the Myra Kraft Achievers Program are each asked to submit an additional essay. Because most applicants will only be submitting one essay, you need to make sure your essay stands out enough to impress the admissions committee. In this post, we will cover how to write each Brandeis essay to maximize your chances of acceptance.

Read this Brandeis essay example to inspire your writing.

Brandeis University Supplemental Essay Prompts

All Applicants: Brandeis was established 75 years ago to address antisemitism, racism, and gender discrimination in higher education, and today, the university remains dedicated to its founding values of inclusivity and justice. How has your educational experience shaped your perspective on these values? (250 words)

International Applicants: What excites you the most about being an international student at Brandeis University? (250 words)

Myra Kraft Achievers Program Applicants: What makes you a good candidate for the Myra Kraft Achievers Program and Brandeis University? (500 words)

All Applicants Prompt

Brandeis was established 75 years ago to address antisemitism, racism, and gender discrimination in higher education, and today, the university remains dedicated to its founding values of inclusivity and justice. how has your educational experience shaped your perspective on these values (250 words).

Brandeis prides itself on its foundation as an institution that has promoted inclusivity since day one, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that their essay question is centered around diversity and inclusion.

Before you begin writing, it’s important to understand the prompt fully. There are two key things to take notice of:

• The first thing is “your educational experience.” This means that you need to draw from your own personal experiences to answer the prompt. It shouldn’t be an English-class style essay picking apart different perspectives on justice—you need to use your own lived experiences to support your opinions.
• The second thing is how the prompt specifically asks for educational experience. Don’t make the mistake of limiting yourself to only experiences in the classroom—educational experiences can take the form of independent research, books, academic extracurriculars, conferences and contests, volunteer work, summer programs, and more.

The other notable phrase in the prompt is “your perspective.” This goes back to the aforementioned idea that you need to draw on your personal experiences to explain your position on the topic of inclusion. Admissions officers don’t want to hear about the dictionary definition of inclusion or how an acclaimed civil rights activist viewed it. They want to hear directly from you.

In this sense, the essay can be thought of like an English-class essay because you are required to take a stance on what values like diversity, inclusion, and justice mean to you, and to support your opinion with evidence from your own experience.

While some students might find it easy to think of an example where they encountered or overcame antisemitism, racism, sexism, homophobia, or xenophobia, other students might not have a personal story come to mind so quickly. However, this essay isn’t optional and for many students it’s the only opportunity for Brandeis to hear their voice directly, so you’ll need to come up with something.

Even if you aren’t directly related to such a situation, think about a time you witnessed the harmful effects of discrimination or the positive effects of inclusion. By engaging in a brainstorming exercise to recall moments involving the topics of the essay, you’ll hopefully be able to trigger memories that are more meaningful to you. If you still have nothing that directly involves you, it’s okay to use a story where you were on the periphery—just compensate for your lack of action in the example with extensive reflection on the situation.

Remember, your educational experience could be in the form of a debate you participated in on the effects of public housing policy on exacerbating racial discrimination, or a book you read about the psychological dynamics behind mass genocides—it doesn’t necessarily have to be a physical interaction you had with others. As long as you communicate that you’ve had some academic exposure that has influenced your perspective, you can choose just about any educational experience to support your essay.

We can’t really tell you how to write about your perspective on Brandeis’s core values because your perspective has to come from you ! However, we can give you some tips to keep in mind and things to emphasize in your essay.

• Don’t lie about your opinion. There is no one right or wrong way to approach the nuances of inclusion and justice. Obviously, you should regard inclusion as a good thing—Brandeis doesn’t want to admit closed-minded or prejudiced students—but your take on it could vary from others. Be authentic and true to your beliefs; believe us, it’s easier to tell when someone is lying in an essay than you might think.
• Tie your perspective to the experience you discuss. For example, a student who attended a summer program in another country and experienced what it felt like to be welcomed by people from other cultural backgrounds should share that she thinks inclusion is critical to forming relationships that otherwise wouldn’t occur. It wouldn’t make sense for her to write about her experience and then talk about her views on why religious tolerance is important. Make sure there is a natural logical thread running through your essay.
• It’s better to be more focused. You aren’t expected to provide a dissertation on the importance of all types of inclusion in just 250 words. Home in on a particular issue you feel strongly about that also relates to your experiences. The more focused your topic is, the more detail you can provide and the more your genuine passion for what you’re saying will shine through.
• Highlight how you personally embody the values. Going beyond the experiences that shaped your perspective, demonstrate to the admissions committee that you live by values of justice and inclusion. Explain how simple choices in your life are guided by these values or share how you’ve grown from embracing these values. This will show how ingrained Brandeis’s core values are in you, making you shine as an applicant.

If you have the space at the end of your essay, a nice way to conclude is to explain how you will carry these guiding principles with you to Brandeis. Go deeper than a generic response that says something like, “I will continue to prioritize inclusive communities as a Brandeis student.” Instead, aim for something more descriptive like, “Whether it’s prioritizing minority voices in articles I write for The Justice or inviting all my hallmates to the weekly floor dinners I’ll cook, I’ll strive to make every student feel welcome.”

International Applicants Prompt

What excites you the most about being an international student at brandeis university (250 words).

Essentially, this prompt is asking, “Why do you want to attend Brandeis as an international student?” Brandeis prides itself on its diversity and wants to continue enriching its campus culture with different perspectives. As an international student, your admissions reader wants to know why you most want to be a part of that community and to bring your perspectives to Brandeis. In other words, this is essentially a standard “Why This College” prompt with an international twist, meaning a lot of the same advice applies.

Before answering this prompt, you need to do your research. Read up on the major you’re planning to pursue, learn about student organizations that exist on campus, look into research opportunities , and figure out how you can get involved in campus life .

Whichever angle you choose for your response, make sure to reference something specific to Brandeis, whether that’s a club you are eager to join, an accelerated BA/MA business program that perfectly suits your academic goals, or the University’s commitment to volunteering and tracking service hours that inspires you.

When it comes to planning your response—a brief 250 words total—you need to first realize that the question does not simply ask why you want to attend Brandeis, but what makes you most excited to be there.

Think about how your life experiences so far can contribute to the overall Brandeis community and how you feel like your perspective will be represented on campus.

For example, if you are pursuing International and Global Studies, you can write about having lived abroad in the regions you will be discussing in class. You can share that you feel as though you can provide a firsthand perspective on how locals view the issues in question and that you know that perspective has a place at Brandeis, which places a lot of emphasis on International Studies, both domestically and abroad.

Continuing the above example, you might also write about how Brandeis would provide you with a home base to conduct your studies of globalization, and that the importance that Brandeis places on interning and studying internationally would allow you to continue your understanding of the globe.

If you are planning to work toward the accelerated BA/MA business degree that Brandeis offers, for example, you can discuss your country of origin’s economic system and fundamental financial practices, and describe how learning about the American market at Brandeis through such a specialized program would give you important insight that your peers at home may not have.

Or, if you are a future Studio Art or Theatre Major, you can share how you’re excited to share your country’s folklore through the art you complete in the program. You can get specific about what your country’s culture, art, or history may look like, as well as note exactly which programs you’re excited to participate in. For instance, you can write about how you’re excited to showcase your work in Brandeis’s 10-day Festival of Creative Arts, and to bring your culture to an American audience.

What you’re most excited about may be outside the classroom! Spend some time perusing the extracurricular offerings at Brandeis. And remember, don’t just name-drop—do thorough research on these organizations and write about why they excite you. Consider the following example:

Perhaps you were heavily involved in your local women’s rights advocacy club back in high school in Taiwan. Write about the challenges you faced in trying to change the perception of women as homemakers that is ingrained in the local culture and how you addressed them. Then detail how Brandeis offers a plethora of opportunities to continue helping women, such as Brandeis’s chapter of the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, and the International Business Women Leadership and Networking group.

If religion and spirituality are important to you, see if you can find an organization that practices your faith. Talk about the way your religion’s practices vary from country to country, and the specificities that your country brings to worship. Tell the admissions committee how you’re excited to foster a better understanding of your belief system among your peers.

Alternatively, if you find that your faith is not well represented at Brandeis, tell the admissions committee how Brandeis’s spirit of diversity and inclusivity makes you excited to bring your religion to its campus. Talk about how you might start your own religious student organization to bring together a new community of people and to educate the rest of the student body about your beliefs.

Brandeis sports a variety of cultural societies, from the German Club to the Taiwanese Student Association. Do other students who hail from your country of origin have a place to come together and promote their culture? If not, think about creating such a space! You can frame your aspirations in terms of multicultural understanding and dialogue, and share some ideas you may have for spreading your culture on campus—whether it be through film screenings, dinners, or anything else that strikes your fancy.

Perhaps you come from a country where journalists are marginalized and free press is stifled. You may wish to join a media organization on campus to let your voice be heard and to advocate for the continued protection of free speech in the United States. You can write about how you’re excited to share your perspectives with your classmates and to discuss the importance of giving everyone an opportunity to voice their opinions and beliefs by grounding the discussion in your own experiences at home.

Although you don’t have a lot of room in your response, don’t be afraid to combine the various academic and extracurricular excitements you have to form one cohesive essay. Just remember to ground your response in the unique perspective that your origins will allow you to share with other students!

For example, you can first delineate how you’re excited to provide insight into your country’s domestic policy in the classroom, and then pivot to your plans for joining Brandeis’s Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance to piggyback off your previous experience in your home country.

Myra Kraft Achievers Program Prompt

What makes you a good candidate for the myra kraft achievers program and brandeis university (500 words).

Founded in 1968, the Myra Kraft Achievers Program is an important manifestation of the University’s commitment to social justice. Each year, 20 students are selected from a pool of approximately 200 applicants.

According to the program mission statement found on the Brandeis website, the Myra Kraft Achievers Program “is targeted toward students who have developed the skills for college success by practicing leadership in their life experiences.”

Typical participants in the Myra Kraft Achievers Program have not had the opportunity to participate in rigorous academic programs such as AP and IB courses while in high school. This program enables these students to enroll in small classes with strong academic support and challenging coursework, and to explore new possibilities in their lives.

The Myra Kraft Achievers Program offers exclusive academic opportunities in writing, quantitative reasoning, science, social science and computer science. Students take a combination of undergraduate courses at Brandeis and non-credit-bearing courses designed for the college level.

The key criteria that the program is looking for in its applicants are:

• Showing determination and focus in difficult circumstances
• Demonstrating leadership potential practiced in life experiences
• Commitment to the pursuit of a postsecondary education

In crafting your response to the program prompt, you want to make sure that the necessary qualities above shine through on your application. This prompt gives you the opportunity to show the admissions committee why you would be a good fit for the program by highlighting your academic and leadership potential.

Don’t worry if you are someone who lacks the conventional list of extracurricular activities and leadership roles. In fact, the Myra Kraft Achievers Program is looking for unconventional students who show promise and potential despite lacking the resources to pursue their interests in high school.

When responding to this prompt, think about the character you have developed in high school while challenging yourself to push for higher academic success, despite not receiving adequate support to do so. How will this grit you have cultivated help you succeed in college?

Below you will find some ideas for how you can best exemplify the aforementioned program criteria and discuss them in your essay:

Determination and Focus

If you are someone who has to take on caretaker duties in your family, such as looking after younger siblings or grandparents while your parents work, you can detail this experience in your response. Highlight the time-management hurdles you encountered while trying to balance your schoolwork and your household duties, and show the admissions committee what you’ve learned through this experience.

For example, you could describe how your study time was compromised because your sister with a peanut allergy accidentally ingested peanuts and you had to take her to the emergency room. Despite your lack of sleep and underpreparedness, you made sure to catch up on the material you missed, so even though you didn’t do well on the quiz the next day, you still aced the final exam. What did this experience teach you? What quality or strength did this train you to have?

If you had to work while in high school in order to provide for yourself or to contribute to your family’s income, write about this in your response. Your ability to take on adult responsibilities while remaining a full-time student at such a young age will undoubtedly impress the admissions committee, even if your grades may have not been optimal as a result. In fact, describing your commitments beyond the classroom will help to justify your academic performance, if necessary, and will make you a stronger candidate for the program.

If you or your family are migrants, fleeing poverty, war, or another hardship, this prompt is an opportunity for you to relate your experience to the program admissions. Tell the story of how your life has been affected by the turmoil in your environment, and highlight your determination to receive a quality education in spite of it.

For instance, if you’ve been unable to attend school for long periods of time due to political or economic instability, but have continued to read and study independently, write about your motivation and explain what drove you to push forward.

Leadership Practiced in Life Experiences

Leadership does not always mean becoming the captain of a sports team or the president of a school club. Leadership potential can shine through in your daily life.

For example, if you had to be a role model for your younger siblings, and guide them through school as your parents were absent, you have shown leadership potential. Discuss all the tasks you performed while caring for your siblings, all the lessons you’ve taught them, and all the guidance you’ve provided. This can be as small as teaching your younger brother to play basketball or helping your sister with homework every day.

In a similar vein, if you’re someone who comes from an underprivileged community, and you have taken the time to mentor younger kids in your school or neighborhood, then that is also a testament to your leadership qualities. You don’t need to have been a part of an after-school program or a community service organization—leadership doesn’t need to occur in a formal setting. If you’ve helped or pushed others to reach a goal, then you’ve demonstrated the kinds of qualities the Myra Kraft Achievers Program is looking for in its cohort.

Commitment to the Pursuit of Education

Even if you’re someone who lacked access to rigorous coursework, you can still underscore your commitment to higher education in your response.

Think about any interests you have. Have you ever taken the time to research a particular topic you were passionate about? Have you sought out a film screening or an exhibit on something that interests you?

Perhaps you frequent the local natural sciences museums because you’ve always been curious about geology or evolutionary biology. Maybe you never miss an independent film showing in your town because your aspiration is to become a movie director or a set designer in the future. Or, are you an avid reader who has read a myriad of political autobiographies in hopes of learning the skills needed to one day lead your community as its mayor or House representative?

Any initiative you’ve shown beyond the classroom to educate yourself and broaden your horizons is evidence of your passion for education and of your desire to keep learning.

As you think about these three key aspects of a Myra Kraft Achiever, remember that the core purpose of this prompt is to understand why you want to be a part of this group of students. Think of this as any other “Why this College?” essay you may have written. Your response should be well researched, and should reference specific aspects of the program that appeal to you and opportunities they present to each cohort. Of course, it should also demonstrate why you —with your past experiences, values, and skills—would be a good fit for the program.

Where to Get Your Brandeis University Essays Edited

Do you want feedback on your Brandeis essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays.

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

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Studying love in translation.

By David Levin March 12, 2024 • Research

Professor Ramie Targoff (Photo by Frédéric Brenner)

The love poem is a standard trope in Western media: an author pining away for their beloved, who is elegant, beautiful, and sometimes elusive. It appears in myriad forms, from rom-coms to romance novels to Hallmark cards and high school notebooks.

According to Ramie Targoff, who is the Jehuda Reinharz Professor of the Humanities, this literary device can be traced back to a single person: Petrarch, the famed 14th-century Italian poet whose work created a template for centuries of future love letters. But how, she wondered, did his influence reach so far? And just how universal are his sentiments in other global cultures?

To test those questions, she’s kicking off an ambitious project to translate Petrarch’s work into a dozen different languages, from Polish to Japanese to Farsi, while retaining its poetic form. Thanks to a major grant from the NOMIS Foundation — a Swiss organization that supports pioneering research in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities — she’s partnering with Italian scholars around the world, each of whom is taking on translations in their native tongue.

The grant will fund the scholars’ time and the construction of an interactive website to compare multiple translations side by side, which Brandeis doctoral student Tali Cohen has already begun to develop. The site will ultimately offer context and definitions for each version, so visitors can click on particular words that have complex meanings to compare how different languages handle the translation into their own cultures. That will be a particularly important feature, Targoff says, since Petrarch’s original words can easily lose their meaning in translation.

“For example, on multiple occasions Petrarch uses the word ‘veil’ when he talks about a feature of his beloved, Laura. But the term is often a reference to Laura’s body, which is something that covers her soul,” she says. “I could simply translate it as ‘flesh,’ but the actual Italian word has other connotations that I want to register.”

Although the grant was only recently announced, Targoff and her colleagues have already done preliminary translations of 20 poems. Petrarch wrote 366 in all, and she aims to finish at least one third of these during the grant period. The team’s initial efforts will be shared at an exploratory seminar hosted by Harvard’s Center for Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, in Florence, Italy, in March.

As translated poems continue to roll in, the project will gradually help to reveal similarities and differences in expressions of love across the globe — a sentiment the world could use a little more of right now.

Brandeis University Thesis Template

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brandeis-thesis – A class for Brandeis University M.A. theses

brandeis-thesis.cls provides the structures and formatting information for an M.A. thesis for the Brandeis University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

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The Heartbreak of an English Football Team

By Hanif Abdurraqib

Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love” was already enjoying a revival, of sorts, as a number in Presley’s post-1968 comeback shows, by the time it poured from the speakers at London’s Wembley Stadium in 1973. The occasion was that year’s F.A. Cup final, featuring the Sunderland Association Football Club, an underdog team that, some might say, had no business being there, and certainly no business winning. The team was facing off against Leeds United, one of the most dominant teams in the game, and the winner of the previous season’s tournament. So it was unsurprising that Sunderland fans became overwhelmed with pride when, as their team lined up and prepared to take the pitch, Elvis’s voice rang out over the stadium speakers. They sang along, in full voice, until the swelling, infectious chorus echoed through the arena. By the end of the game, their pride turned to ecstasy. Sunderland won 1–0. After the victory, Elvis’s song, rebranded by Sunderland supporters as “Wise Men Say,” based on the song’s opening line, became a team anthem of sorts. It not only commemorated Sunderland’s luckiest moment but seemed to suggest that the bad old times were in the past. Good things lay ahead, a time of triumph and championships. Alas, that was not to be. The 1973 F.A. Cup was the club’s last major trophy for the next fifty years.

There’s one scene that haunts me most from the Netflix series “Sunderland ’Til I Die,” which concluded its third and final season last month. It is 2021, and Sunderland, after many dramatic swings in its fortunes, finds itself again playing in the third-tier league (now known as League One), engaging in a high-stakes playoff match to determine whether it’ll get promoted back to second-tier league. The scene, from the finale of Season 2, comes at the end of a playoff match against Charlton Athletic. In the first half of the game, Sunderland had got off to a 1–0 lead, but it was the kind of lead that you could tell wouldn’t last long, even if you didn’t already know the kind of luck Sunderland had been having. The viewer watches as the game’s remaining minutes tick agonizingly by. Sunderland loses a crucial possession, and Charlton levels the score, 1–1, and then it happens all at once: a ball bounces around loosely in the box, then is put away by a Charlton striker, with next to zero time left on the clock. There’s no way for Sunderland to mount an attempt at an equalizer.

This, on its own, would be ruinous enough. But there is a sequence within the scene that serves, to me, as a thesis both for fandom and for its inevitable heartbreak: a montage showing Sunderland players collapsed on the pitch while confetti falls around them. A father in the stands pulls his weeping son close and says, with painful clarity, “Been here before, haven’t we?” A teary-eyed woman lingers as the stadium empties, seemingly vacillating between rage, grief, and disbelief, a Sunderland A.F.C. flag still draped around her shoulders. She looks over at her partner and asks, “Why is it never us celebrating? Why is it never us?”

The man shrugs silently. There’s no good way to think about such a question, until, one day, the trophy is raised for you and your team.

“Sunderland ’Til I Die” has little in common with the traditional contemporary sports docuseries that have lately flooded streaming platforms. It isn’t as preoccupied with day-by-day behind-the-scenes action as, say, Amazon’s “All or Nothing,” where each season follows a team (from the N.F.L. to English football) through a single season, with miked-up shots during games and a disembodied voice as narrator. It isn’t like another Netflix series, “Last Chance U,” which follows junior college basketball and football programs that, as the title suggests, offer one last shot for young players at risk of flaming out. In those shows, the coaches are often the main points of attraction, and the game is filtered through their many eccentricities (to say the least). “Sunderland,” by contrast, is first and foremost a study of place, which makes it something slightly beyond a study of a sport. Yes, of course, the show spends plenty of time on the players, and the games themselves (and, in the second season, perhaps a touch too much time on the activities of the front office). But it shines most as a portrait of a people in a town, people who have hitched their identity to a team that is, as of today, a hundred and forty-five years old, as embedded in the geography of the city of Sunderland as its old churches and shipyards and the river that divides the city in two.

A home town is, first, a place that is chosen for you. At some point, you may decide to choose the place back, accepting all of its joys and disappointments and simply hoping that in the end you can break even. “Sunderland” rests on an understanding of this calculation, and goes further in arguing that Sunderland Football Club hasn’t lived up to its role in the balance. The series begins in the 2017-18 season, when Sunderland has been relegated after a decade in the tier-one Premier League, but the club’s entire history is pocked with spectacular failures. In the late fifties, the team became embroiled in a financial scandal when it was caught making payments to players in excess of the agreed maximum wage. The following year, amid fines and suspensions, they were first relegated, to the second division. The team’s lowest of lows came in 1987, just two years after it appeared in its first League Cup final, when it was bumped to the third division. It climbed back to the Premiership in 1990, after an opponent that it lost to in the playoff final was, coincidentally, found guilty of a financial scandal and disqualified, but they only stayed up for a season before being relegated again after a devastating loss on the last day of the 1990-91 season. As the series shows, there is material impact from this volatility, beyond the crushing of fans’ hopes. When a team gets relegated, its budget suffers. Jobs are lost. Teams can’t pursue the kind of quality of players they might be able to attract in the Premier League. The teams that go down have to fight to get back up, and they have to do it with fewer resources, which puts a strain on the team’s management, its staff, its players, and its broader community.

It might seem like the very definition of insanity to place one’s hopes into anything or anyone with a proven track record of letting you down. But the psychology of the sports fan, particularly when it is a fan who feels a deeper kinship with a place, follows a different logic. One season ends, and there is a mourning period, but each new season brings a clean slate upon which dreams can be projected. And so, in the Netflix series, we watch a fan, in his newly downsized apartment, sift through his decades-old Sunderland memorabilia. We listen as he explains, in a quiet voice, how he used to have even more memorabilia but sold some just to have a little extra money to go to more games. We follow around the cabdriver who never misses a home match, and the man who gets two large teas from McDonald’s before every game, one for him and one for his longtime friend and fellow-fan.

Your heart might break for these poor souls, or it might break with them, but what happened for me, throughout the show’s three seasons, was that I found myself reconsidering my own forms of devotion. The question in my mind shifted from How could people love a sports team this much ? to What is it that I sacrifice for and return to, again and again, even given all that I know ? I am perhaps too relentless of a romantic, but this is a part of the human condition that I gravitate toward, relate to, and almost envy when it isn’t in my immediate grasp: the desire to open oneself up to potential hurt for the sake of whatever pleasure might precede it.

The third and final season of “Sunderland” is just three episodes long, picking up in the middle of the 2021-22 campaign, when the team is near the top of the third-division standings, fighting for promotion into the second division. There are somewhat hastily drawn portraits catching us up on familiar players and introducing new ones. The defender Lynden Gooch is reaching the end of a lengthy contract that has had him with the squad since he was a teen-ager. The newest addition, a forward named Ross Stewart, was plucked from near obscurity from a Scottish team to become Sunderland’s leading scorer and fan favorite. (When he’s in a good groove on the field, fans sing, “Ross Stewart is the best on earth,” to the tune of Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.”) Luke O’Nien, who came to Sunderland in 2018, in the midst of a downturn, and played through a brutal stretch of seasons, is hurt and working his way back from injury. The episodes focus on the final run of the season, when Sunderland, needing to be in the top two in the league to secure immediate promotion, slips and rises and slips again.

Sunderland ends up in fifth place, which qualifies it for the League playoffs. And there the team is again, at Wembley, just as it was as champion in 1973. Sunderland, playing against the Wycombe Wanderers, took another early 1–0 lead. (It is said that 2–0 is the most dangerous lead in the sport, but I’d wager that an early 1–0 lead is most harrowing for spectators and participants alike.) With eighty minutes remaining in the match, the team races against the clock and against its entire vexed history. The wonder of the sports documentary lies in how every move can be slowed down, allowing the intensity to balloon around each touch of the ball in a way that it didn’t, for me, when I watched the same Sunderland game in real time, in May of 2022. When Stewart slides a second goal into the left corner of the net with eleven minutes remaining, bringing the score to 2–0, and Sunderland has all but secured a victory and a promotion, the show offers another montage: all of the past times they couldn’t quite do it, contrasted against the time they could.

In the late fall of last year, I was at Lower.com Field, in my home town of Columbus, Ohio, because the Columbus Crew was in the Major League Soccer final, its fifth over all. (The team won in 2020, in a game played for a nearly empty stadium.) The Crew had a new coach, and one of its star players had left the team midway through to play in Saudi Arabia. It wasn’t even the highest-ranked team in the state, yet here it was, in another M.L.S. Cup final, after a stunning, high-anxiety playoff run. It was playing the Los Angeles Football Club, and it scored twice early in the game, but in the second half it gave up a goal, bringing the score to 2–1 with about twenty-five minutes left on the clock. At that point, I could no longer bear to watch. I’d turn away from the field, or I’d pace, or I’d go up to the top of the stands and watch from farther away, as if the distance might enhance my ability to endure what I was taking in. It is comical to think about now, in hindsight, but no more comical or absurd than any other number of things I’ve done for love, or for a feeling adjacent to love.

The Crew won, and after the celebration on the pitch died down people in the stands, per the local custom, put their arms around one another. Through some combination of reverence and laziness, American soccer has borrowed many of its chants from the British. The speakers played “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” and the fans sang along, replacing the “you” at the end of the chorus with “Crew.” Elvis’s song, I might note, is not only about love in a plain sense but about surrender, about having no choice but to go to a place and faithfully remain there. The part that gets me isn’t the “Crew” substitution but the first part, the lines that both Sunderland and Crew fans share: “Wise men say / Only fools rush in.” Only fools would give themselves over to something so entirely out of their control. Then again, I’ve been a fool for far less. ♦

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