Where's the Sport in Sports Writing?

This talk addresses the puzzling circumstance that although sport is ubiquitous in daily life, and widely covered in cultural studies, media studies, sociology, history and sometimes philosophy, there are next to no studies of sports writing. I will suggest that there is a particular formal resistance to sports writing. The explosion of scholarly work around the issue of sports as one of the most visible forms in which pressing contemporary issues, such as race, gender, and disability, are discussed highlights the timeliness of this topic, especially for scholars of the overlap between language and sport more generally. 

Bio:

Alexander Regier is William Faulkner Professor of English and Chair of the English Department at Rice University. In recent years, he has held fellowships at the National Humanities Center (2023), a research award from the NEH (2023) and the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers (2018-20). Regier is the co-editor of The Bloomsbury Handbook on Sports Writing 1789-2020, which is under contract. His books include is Exorbitant Enlightenment: Blake, Hamann, and Anglo-German Constellations (Oxford University Press, 2018) and Fracture and Fragmentation in British Romanticism (Cambridge University Press, 2010). His Awkwardness: The History and Art of Unease is under review. 

This is a hybrid event hosted by Humanities Institute.

• For online attendees, Zoom link will be provided before the event.