CFP: The Olympics: Politics and Protest

The Olympics: Politics and Protest

The Carnegie Faculty of Sport and Education at Leeds Metropolitan University invites papers for the above conference, to be held at Headingley Carnegie Stadium over 17th and 18th July 2008.

The Olympic Games are probably the most popular event in the history of sport. The TV audiences for both the Summer and the Winter Games now approach saturation point, the Games generate huge commercial possibilities for ‘Olympic partners’ and a deafening cheer goes up in the nominated country when the venue for the next tournament but one is revealed. Olympic history – especially the history dispensed by the International Olympic Committee itself – is invariably a history of sporting triumph and comradeship. The political dimensions of the Olympic movement have too often been hidden from its history – hence this conference.

We invite papers that take a critical stance on the Olympic movement at some point in its history. These papers may address any of the following themes:

- de Coubertin and the establishment of the modern Olympics
- campaigns against the Olympics and/or specific Olympiads
- gender and the Olympics and the campaign for gender equity
- racism and the Olympics
- the campaign to establish, and issues around, the Paralympics
- the amateur-professional divide
- commercialism and the Olympics
- Olympics and the Cold War
- the Olympics as a site of protest
- the Olympics and ‘human rights’
- the Olympics and the environment
- critiques of Olympic ideology and educational programmes

Needless to say, papers outside of these specified themes will be considered.

Keynote Speakers:
- Professor Helen Lenskyj (University of Toronto) author of Inside the Olympic Industry (State University of New York Press, 2000).
- John Horne, Reader in the Sociology of Sport, University of Edinburgh

Please direct outline of your proposed paper (300 words approx.), and any academic enquires, to conference organiser:

Stephen Wagg
Reader in Sport and Society
Leeds Metropolitan University

S.Wagg@leedsmet.ac.uk