BSSH Conference 2020 The Writing of HIstory

Sport in History Podcast

The Writing of HIstory is the subject of the third panel from the BSSH’s 2020 Conference, chaired by Dr Nick Piercey, with a wide ranging discussion between scholars researching in a variety of fields. In A ‘better attendance than usual’: Deconstructing the History of Sport and Recreation at Port Sunlight Samuel Clevenger of Towson University questions the benevolence of model communities and whether workers engaged in organised recreation as much as is assumed by conventional narratives. Dr Alex Jackson, in The uses of nostalgia and reminiscence in English football writing during WW1, interrogates the way in which nostalgia and ‘reminuisance’ (!) is a phenomenon of times of crisis, including our own. Sarah Hardstaff of the University of Cambridge looks at Identity, Representation and Coming-of-Age in Football Fiction for Children and the way in which representations of footballers influenced, and influences, who can be conceived of as footballers in the public imagination.