Despite its status as one of cinema’s most enduring and popular genres, complete with a rich history of narrative tropes, aesthetic conventions and character types, the sports film is more frequently analysed as a vehicle for the on-screen representation of sport than a distinct film genre. The representation of sport may be an identifying feature of the sports film, but in the way that horses are an identifying feature of westerns: a key part, to be sure, but film criticism would be much poorer if it elided the complexity of John Wayne’s performance in The Searchers to focus on the horse he rode. We seek abstracts for an edited collection reflecting the depth and breadth of the sports film as genre.

The sports film, like the western, riffs upon an established, endlessly replicable formula – underdog heroes, training montages, nobly losing or unlikely winning the big game – to address a broad swathe of themes, from race and class to gender and geopolitics. This volume’s editors welcome proposals for previously unpublished essays analysing specific sports films, genre tropes, and the position of particular actors, writers or directors within the sports film genre. We are currently only focusing on narrative features, so essays regarding documentaries or television series unfortunately will not be considered.

Suggested topics for this proposed collection include but are not restricted to:

• Race and ethnicity in the sports film
• Class and class relations in the sports film
• Masculinity, femininity and gender roles in the sports film
• Bodies, physicality and disability in the sports film
• Geopolitical proxies in the sports film
• Neurodiversity in the sports film
• Social mobility and fame in the sports film
• The role of the underdog in the sports film
• Training montages and other aesthetic tropes of the sports film
• Victory and failure in the sports film

Completed chapters should be under 4,000 words, including notes. Please send a 250–300 word abstract and short bio for consideration to sportsfilmbook@gmail.com by 31 March 2025. Any inquiries can be sent to the same email address.