Writing Lives in Sport
Biographies, Life-histories and Methods
A part of the series Acta Jutlandica (78:3; Humanistisk serie 77) , and the subject area History (19th-20th century)
Out of stock
Edited by
John Bale,
Mette K. Christensen and
Gertrud Pfister
With contributions by
John Bale,
Hans Bonde,
Mette K. Christensen,
Fiona Dowling,
Jeffrey Hill,
Richard Holt,
Leena Laine,
Niels Kayser Nielsen,
Gertrud Pfister,
Birgitte Possing,
Martti Silvennoinen and
Else Trangbæk
More about the book
About the book
This is a book of stories about sports persons: sports stars, less-known athletes and relatively unknown physical education teachers and sports scientists. More exactly, these 13 essays all deal with problems associated with writing sport biographies - how does an author navigate among myths and truths? Why do some athletes live on in the public mind while others, whose achievements may have been greater, fade from memory? Are sports biographies different from those dealing with people from the non-sporting realm? The subjects range from direct theoretical explorations of writing sport biographies to discussions of biographies themselves.
Topics include the following: The German-American sports- and physiology scientist Professor Ernst Jokl; Danish gymnastics pedagogue Niels Bukh; two studies of physical education teachers, including Martti Silvennionen's work on autoethnographical pedagogy in PE teacher training; women's sport in Denmark's intermediary period of 1920-1950; writing about women and sport, and the Finnish worker sports movement experience from a woman's viewpoint.
Another essay observes the contrasts in the legends of two sports stars in twentieth century Britain, the English footballer Jackie Milburn and the Olympic athlete, Godfrey Brown. Other topics include the English sports hero from the 1940s and 50s, Denis Compton, the Swedish footballer Lennart "Nacka" Skoglund and the Danish cyclist Niels Fredborg.
Writing Lives in Sport provides lively discussions of individual sporting lives as well as important methodological and conceptual questions for writers and biographers of sport figures and other genres.
