Project Details
Projekt
Sport-Arenas - Scenes and (Work)Sites of the Sports Event
Subject Area
Modern and Contemporary History
General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
Term
since 2023
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 510400180
The project intends to analyse sports arenas as scenes and (work)sites of sporting events in a Franco-German as well as in a European and global context. In doing so, ARENES aims to achieve a synchronic and diachronic understanding of the functions and dynamics, the form(s) and medialisation, the impact and significance of sports arenas in the long 20th century. They are not only analysed as places of the production of sporting events, but also as sites that stage the sporting spectacle and the sporting body, as well as allowing the circulation of values, experiences and ideas. ARENES aims to investigate sports arenas through six sub-projects rich in material. They are case studies that cover several decades, compare several countries and societies and ask about mutual borrowings, influences and transfers. The sub-projects are closely interlinked via six epistemological fields of tension. In addition, all sub-projects can be located in several constitutive periods of the history of sport arenas, ranging from the beginnings of modern sport in the last third of the 19th century to the early 21st century. The Franco-German dimension of the project is fundamental and productive in two senses: methodologically, because ARENES for the first time profitably links traditions and potentials of both countries in an increasingly interdisciplinary sports research; in terms of content, because – starting from a common sports cultural foundation – significant influences on other European countries emanated especially from France in the early 20th century and because the current push of globalisation in sports must anchor this transnational binomial in new contexts and expand it to include new constellations. In addition, ARENES sees itself as a consistently interdisciplinary project. The benefits of cooperation between the historical and literary sciences are not only programmatically postulated, but also put into practice for the first time within the framework of a DFG-ANR project. The topic of sport(arenas) is excellently suited for an interweaving of disciplinary angles: on the one hand, because modern sport itself has always had an inherent aesthetic dimension, and on the other hand, because sport has always been perceived as a media phenomenon and as the result of complex, culturally coded communicative processes. The German-French and cross-disciplinary cooperation, the transnational perspective embedding German-French phenomena in European and global contexts, and finally the fact that the sub-projects are interrelated in terms of subject matter, time, space as well as research designs and guiding questions, essentially constitute the added value of the project as a whole.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
International Connection
France
