The Visual Turn in Sports History - A Special Issue of the International
Journal for the History of Sport

Call for Papers: SECOND CALL - Deadline 1 September 2008

Mike Huggins (University of Cumbria) and Mike O'Mahony (University of
Bristol) are jointly editing a future special issue of the International
Journal of the History of Sport dedicated to representations of sport in
visual media, including: painting; sculpture; photography; cinema; and mass
culture. The aim of the issue is to present an inter-disciplinary analysis
of images of sport that takes accounts of recent developments,
methodological concerns and hitherto overlooked sources within the
disciplines of sports history, social history, art history, film history and
visual culture studies.

Sport has always been marked by a wealth of imagery and visual symbolism.
Its visual forms are value-laden interpretations of the sporting world that
vary from period to period and from place to place. Yet, back in the 1980s
historians still noted 'the invisibility of the visual', and of a widespread
reluctance to explore 'the deeper levels of experience which images probe',
and of 'the condescension towards images'. Conversely, in disciplines that
focus predominantly on the visual, sport has frequently been regarded as of
secondary interest. Studies dedicated to the visual representation of the
sports theme, for example, have been relatively few and far between and
regarded as on the periphery of visual culture studies.

This special issue, planned for 2010, seeks to integrate an analysis of the
sporting theme within a broad range of visual culture activities and to
highlight the value of such images as primary documents that cast further
light on a broad range of socio-political and socio-cultural practices. A
number of recent publications have striven to highlight the importance of
visual culture to an understanding of sports history (Aaron Baker,
Contesting Identities: Sports in American Film, 2006; Mike O'Mahony, Sport
in the USSR: Physical Culture - Visual Culture, 2006). This issue aims to
expand upon this growing field of enquiry by drawing together a collection
of essays each looking at different aspects of the visual within the
representation of sport and its histories. Proposals are welcomed from
scholars working in a number of fields including sports history, social
history, film history, design history and any aspect of visual culture
studies, so long as they would be of interest to readers of IJHS, which is a
high-ranking journal with a global readership, and which variously shed
light on methodology, theoretical underpinning and relevant sources.
Subjects might include, but are by no means restricted to:

Representing Horse Racing in the 18th/19th century
Documenting Motion: Sport and Physical Animation in the Photographic
Experiments of Eadward Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey
Representing Children's Games: Sport and Discipline in Victorian and
Edwardian Britain
Boxing and Early American Manhood: The Paintings of Thomas Eakins and
George Bellows
Sport, visuality and the First World War
Sport and the Cult of Collecting: Sport and Cigarette Cards
Advertising Sports Events: The Sports Poster
Sport and Representations of the Modern Woman
Sporting Portraits
The Sporting Ubermensch: National Socialist Visual Culture and the
Sporting Body
Celluloid Sport: Sport on Screen
Images of Conflict: The George Best Murals in Northern Ireland
Sites of Memory: Monuments to Sporting Heroes
Body-Building and Sexuality: In Search of the Body Perfect?

An associated conference is planned for June 2009 to be held at the
University of Bristol. Please send proposals of c.300-400 words to
Mike.HugginsCumbria.ac.uk and/or Mike.OMahonybristol.ac.uk by 1 September
2008 (second call). Please note the editors have already received a large
number of proposals but welcome additional submissions.

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Dr Mike O'Mahony, History of Art
Mike.OMahonybristol.ac.uk