Sport and the Nation, International Conference, 19-20 January 2012 (Edited)

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Department of English and School of Media, Communication and Culture, Jadavpur University

The history of modern sport is intimately linked to the rise of the modern nation-state and its cultures of self-representation. Indeed, though games have existed as long as human beings have inhabited the earth, organized sport in the contemporary sense is thought to be a distinctive product of modernity. Enshrined in the curriculum of the Victorian public school and viewed as a means of training imperial administrators, sport also entered the public sphere as a spectacle for mass audiences, leading to a regulation of its practices and the foundation of sports bodies.

The founder of the modern Olympic Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, was convinced that 'organised sport can create both moral and social strength', and international sporting spectacles became a means for displaying the health and self-discipline of individual nation-states. This ideology, imperial and European in its origin, was transmitted also to the colonised subjects of European imperialism, and through a complex process of appropriation and re-investment, sport also became a site wherein the former 'subject-races' could assert their own strength and skill, as Jesse Owens famously did in the Berlin Olympics.

The postcolonial ideology of the nation invests heavily in sport as a means of national self-projection, while at the very same time, globalization and multinational capital has created a huge sports industry where highly-paid athletes compete in profit-making spectacles for a global audience. Sport is a vital ingredient of contemporary culture, and has produced a rich literature of its own, as well as representations in other media such as film. But sport has remained a problematic constituent in the task of national self-construction in India: acknowledged but neglected, a focus of hope but also of disappointment. 2011 marked the centenary of Mohun Bagan's triumph in the IFA Shield, but in 2012, as India's athletes prepare for yet another Olympic Games, they carry the painful legacy of mismanagement and confusion from our hosting of the Commonwealth Games. Yet there have been notable gains and achievements, not just in cricket. In this context, it is important to explore what sport means for the modern nation, in India and in the world.

We therefore propose to hold a two-day, Interdisciplinary International Conference on 'Sport and the Nation', looking at sporting identities and cultures, the literature of sport, sporting nationalisms, gender, race and multiculturalism in sport, competition, spectacle, and globalized sport, and a range of other issues. Earlier conferences on related themes have been held at the University of Leeds and the University of Paris (Sorbonne), and there is the prospect of building up an international collaborative research network in this field. We have already received expressions of interest from a number of scholars in India and abroad, including Ramachandra Guha and Ashis Nandy.

Please note that there are limited places for papers offered in response to this notice.
Last dates for receiving paper proposals is September 30, 2011. Successful applicants will be notified by October 31, 2011.