The Allure of Sports in Western Culture

Published by University of Toronto Press 2019

The Allure of Sports in Western Culture

Edited by: John Zilcosky and Marlo A. Burks

https://doi.org/10.3138/9781487519605

Overview
Contents

About this book

Sports are the most popular spectator events in the history of the world. This volume demonstrates how sports shape societies and individuals. The essays offer critical new insights and historical case studies from historians, theorists, literature scholars, and athletes.

Author / Editor information

Zilcosky John :

John Zilcosky is a professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto.
Burks Marlo A. :

Marlo Alexandra Burks is an independent scholar and recent postdoctoral Fellow in the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin.

Reviews

Stefan Willer, Department of German Literature, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin:

"The fascination of sport in all its richness and ambivalence has hardly ever been explored so deeply. Magnificent!"

Alexander Regier, Department of English, Rice University:

"Zilcosky and Burks have put together a timely collection of exceptional quality. The Allure of Sports in Western Culture evidences the growing importance of sports studies as a field that urges us to think through some of the most pressing questions of ethics and aesthetics. It shows how sports play a key role in historical subject formations and illuminates how the cultural as well as political events that institutionalize this practice are central to our modern self-understanding. The contributions make clear that scholars across the humanities have much to profit from thinking about the allure of sports."

Andrew James Johnston, Freie Universität Berlin:

"The Allure of Sports in Western Culture brings together a collection of insightful investigations into the qualities, both ethical and aesthetic, that have constituted the fascination of sports from classical antiquity to the present day. Observed from a broad variety of perspectives, the essays in this volume address the entangled forms of desire – for beauty, for ugliness, for losing one’s individuality – that combine to make sports one of the most significant cultural activities of the West."

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
PART I. Introduction
Introduction: The Allure of Sports John Zilcosky Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	3
PART II. Theoretical Perspectives
1. Sports/Allure Grant Farred Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
2. “Allure” Constrained by “Ethics”? How Athletic Events Have Engaged Their Spectators Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	36
PART III. The Ancient World
3. The Fading Allure of Greek Athletics Sofie Remijsen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	55
4. Wrestling, or the Art of Disentangling Bodies John Zilcosky Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	79
5. The Allure and Ethics of Ancient Aesthetics: Hellenism in the Modern Olympic Movement Charles Stocking Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
PART IV. Modern Europe
6. Attractive or Repugnant? Foot Races in Eighteenth-Century Germany and Britain Rebekka Von Mallinckrodt Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
7. A Well-Trained Community: Gymnastics for the German Nation Wolf Kittler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	168
8. Importing a German Kampfsport: The Reception and Practice of Japanese Martial Arts in Interwar Germany Sarah Panzer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	202
9. The Ethics and Allure of the Foul in Football Annette Vowinckel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
PART V. Coda
10. Swimming Karin Helmstaedt Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	245
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	255
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	257

Language: English
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Audience: College/higher education;Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 288
Keywords: allure of sports; history and philosophy of sport; psychology of sport; Olympic Games; sport and society; sociology of sport; spectator sports; recreation and leisure; theory of sports; athleticism

eBook

Published: September 10, 2019
ISBN: 9781487519605