[ecrea] Sport, media and regional identity symposium (second call for papers)

Symposium announcement and call for papers (extended)

Sport, media and regional identity

19 June 2013

Warrington Campus, University of Chester


The relationship between sport, the media and /national/ identity has 
featured in numerous academic and political debates in recent years: in 
contrast, the links between sports media and /regional/ identity have 
received relatively little attention. This seems a curious oversight, 
when one considers the centrality and cultural significance of 
particular sports, or clubs, to numerous regional or sub-national 
identities across Europe and beyond: for example, Rugby Union in the 
South Wales Valleys, Cycling in Flanders, Pelota in the Basque Country, 
Australian Rules Football in Melbourne, FC Barcelona in Catalonia, 
Shinty in Highland Scotland.

This one-day symposium intends to explore and develop these themes at 
the University of Chester's Warrington campus, which is located in the 
heartland of one of the most distinctive regional sporting subcultures 
in Europe: the Rugby League traditions of Northern England. The 
symposium will celebrate these traditions alongside the 2013 Rugby 
League World Cup, which comes to Warrington in October 2013.

The symposium aims to take an inter-disciplinary approach to the study 
of both factual and fictional representations of regional identity in 
the sporting context. It is open to researchers from across the media 
and cultural studies in the broadest sense, with applications encouraged 
from those working in the areas of journalism, film, radio, photography, 
popular music, media history and popular memory. Papers focusing on 
international perspectives, both historical and present-day, would be 
particularly welcome.

Please email a 200 word abstract (stating your name, email address and 
institutional affiliation) to: (simon.roberts /at/ chester.ac.uk). The closing 
date for abstracts is 1 April 2013. There will be no registration fee 
for this event, but if you would like to attend without presenting a 
paper, please send an email to: (simon.roberts /at/ chester.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(simon.roberts /at/ chester.ac.uk)>.