Sport in Paris

This book revisits the development of recreational and professional sporting activities in Paris between 1854 and 2024. It surveys the rich and multifaceted history of athletic practices, and constitutes the first comprehensive piece of scholarship exclusively dedicated to the relationship between sport, history, and culture in the City of Light.

This edited volume proposes to revisit the development of recreational and professional sporting activities in the French capital between 1854 and 2024. It comprises fifteen chapters surveying the rich and multifaceted history of athletic practices in Paris, and constitutes the first comprehensive piece of scholarship exclusively dedicated to the relationship between sport, history, and culture in the City of Light. This collection articulates and emphasizes the sustained presence and impact of sports in Parisian lives for over a century and a half, at the same time as it encourages readers to think about sports as a form of cultural expression able to alter national, regional, and individual identity, in other words, as a form of entertainment able to shift our perception of leisure and spectatorship, an activity able to transform urban spaces and social norms. To this end, Sport in Paris proposes complementary perspectives, by not only addressing multiple sporting disciplines (tennis, football, boxing, etc.) but also stressing interdisciplinary approaches (history of the press, urbanism, health studies, literary geography, etc.).

Autorentext

Maxence P. Leconte is Assistant Professor of French Studies and head of the French Studies program at Trinity University, San Antonio. His research primarily investigates the interplay between the rise of organized sports and modernity, as he contends that their combined influence acted as an agent of change that transformed society's perception of the role played by corporeality (including its relation to gender, race and class) during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in France, Europe and the Americas. His most recent publications, discussing themes as varied as sport and classic French cinema, sport and the history of graphic novels, or sport and transmedia storytelling, have appeared in many peer-reviewed journals.

Inhalt

Contents: Maxence Leconte: Introduction: Looking Back, Moving Forward-The History and Culture of Sport in Paris - Corry Cropper and Pratima Prasad: Reinventing Le Sport: Eugène Chapus, Identity and the Parisian Elite - David L. Chapman: Wrestling at the Fête Foraine: Force and Farce at the Fair (1850-1950) - Martin Hurcombe: Bringing Marathon to Paris: The Press and the Promotion of Endurance Running in the Belle Epoque - Pierre-Olaf Schut: Paris and the Olympic Games: A Comparative History - Rachel Ozerkevich: Public Participation and Amateur Exclusivity: Revisiting the Depiction of the 1900 Paris Games in the Illustrated Sports Press - Roxanna Curto: Paris and la Petite Balle Jaune: Two Centuries of Jeu de Paume, Royal Tennis and Lawn Tennis in the City of Light - Maxence Leconte and Thomas Bauer: (Re)mapping Sports Literature in Paris during the Interwar Period - Florys Castan-Vicente: The Fémina-Sport Club in Interwar Paris: All Sports for All Women - Stéphane Hadjeras (trans. by Maxence Leconte): Carpentier vs. Siki: The Black Boxer's Pyrrhic Victory in Paris, Capital of the French Colonial Republic - Sébastien Moreau and Sylvain Ville: 'Thanks to the Palais des Sports, Paris will be the Sports Capital of Europe': L'Auto, Jeff Dickson, and the Vel d'Hiv (1909-1959) - Robert W. Lewis: The 'Ronde Infernale' on the Rue Nélaton: The Six Jours de Paris (1913-1958) - Keith Rathbone: Franco-Antipodean Sports Contacts: A Transnational History of Sport - Joan Tumblety: The Cure d'Exercice: Understanding the Therapeutic Value of Sport and Physical Exercise in the Paris Region, c. 1880-1950 - Paul Dietschy: The Long Road of Professional Football in Paris, from the Belle Époque to the Bosman Ruling - Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff and Christelle Bertho: France and the United States: Paris as a Land of Welcome, Adoption, and Opportunity for 'American' Basketball, from the YMCA to the NBA.