University of Galway

Sport and Cinema Bibliography

The following is a list of relevant publications examining aspects of the relationship between sport and cinema. Please forward information on further relevant publications to sportineuropeancinema@gmail.com

  • Ardolino, F. (1988). Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, and Eight Men Out. Journal of Popular Film and Television, 18(2), 43–51.
  • Ardolino, F. (2003). From Christ-like folk hero to bumbling Bacchus: Filmic images of Babe Ruth, 1920–1992. In S. C. Wood & J. D. Pincus (Eds.), Reel baseball: Essays and interviews on the national pastime, Hollywood and American culture (pp. 107–119). Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.
  • Ashton, T. (2013). Soccer in Spain: Politics, literature and film. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
  • Babington, B. (2014). The sports film: Games people play. London: Wallflower Press.
  • Baker, A. (1997). A left/right combination: Populism and depression era boxing films. In A. Baker & T. Boyd (Eds.), Out of bounds: Sports, media, and the politics of identity (pp. 161–174). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  • Baker, A. (2003). Contesting identities: Sports in American film Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
  • Bennett, B. (2019). Cycling and cinema. London: Goldsmiths Press.
  • Bergan, R. (1982). Sports in the movies. Orange, NJ: Proteus.
  • Biltereyst, D., & Vande Winkel, R. (2020). Sport films and “banal” nationalism in interwar Belgium: Flandria film, mythomoteurs and the cult of the “Flandriens.” In S. Crosson (Ed.), Sport, film, and national culture (pp. 79–92). New York: Routledge.
  • Bonzel, K. (2006). Soccer to the rescue: How the Miracle of Berne gave Germans back their identity—twice. Sporting Traditions, 22(2), 1–12.
  • Bonzel, K. (2020). National pastimes: Cinema, sports, and nation (sports, media, and society). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
  • Bowden, M. (1994). Jerusalem, Dover Beach, and Kings Cross: Imagined places as metaphors of the British class struggle in Chariots of Fire and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. In S. C. Aitken & L. E. Zonn (Eds.), Place, power, situation and spectacle: Geography of film (pp. 69–100). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
  • Boyle, E., Millington, B., & Vertinsky, P. (2006). Representing the female pugilist: Narratives of race, gender, and disability in Million Dollar Baby. Sociology of Sport Journal, 23(2), 99–116.
  • Briley, R. (2011). The baseball film in postwar America: A critical study, 1948–1962. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.
  • Briley, R., Schoenecke, M. K. & Carmichael, D. A. (Eds.). (2008). All-stars and movie stars: Sports in film and history. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
  • Brown, D. & Bryant, J. (2006). Sports Content on U.S. Television. In A. A. Raney & J. Bryant (Eds.), Handbook of sports and media (pp. 77–104). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  • Brūveris, K. (2016). Sport, cinema and the national imaginary in Dream Team: 1935. Studies in Eastern European Cinema, 8(1), 49–61.
  • Burns, G. (1987). The sports pages: A critical bibliography of twentieth-century American novels and stories featuring baseball, basketball, football, and other athletic pursuits. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press.
  • Buscemi, F. (2020). Primo Carnera, propaganda and Mussolini’s international legitimisation: the boxer who was a passport for fascism. In S. Crosson (Ed.), Sport, film, and national culture (pp. 126–143). New York: Routledge.
  • Butler, A. C., Zaromb, F. M., Lyle, K. B., & Roediger, H. L. (2009). Using popular films to enhance classroom learning: The good, the bad, and the interesting. Psychological Sciences, 20(9), 1161–1168.
  • Camy, J., & Camy, G. (2016). Sport et cinéma. Paris: Éditions du Bailli de Suffren.
  • Capraro, A. M., & Vargas, P. P. I. (2020). Football, national culture and politics in Brazil in 1970: O Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias (The Year My Parents Went on Vacation). In S. Crosson (Ed.), Sport, film, and national Culture (pp. 195–205). New York: Routledge.
  • Carlson, L. H. (1998). Review of Diamonds in the Dark: America, baseball, and the movies. Journal of Sport History, 25(2), 360–362.
  • Cashmore, E. (2000). Sports culture: An A–Z guide. New York: Routledge.
  • Caudwell, J. (2008). Girlfight: Boxing women. Sport in Society, 11(2–3), 227–239.
  • Cermak, I. (2017). The cinema of hockey: Four decades of the game on screen. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.
  • Cook, P. (1982). Masculinity in crisis? Screen, 23(3–4), 39–46.
  • Crawford, S. A. (1988). The sport film—Its cultural significance. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 59(6), 45–49.
  • Crosson, S. (2013). Sport and film. New York: Routledge.
  • Crosson, S. (2017). Sport and Christianity in American cinema: “The beloved grew fat and kicked” (Deuteronomy 32:15). In A. Adogame, N. J. Watson, & A. Parker (Eds.), Global perspectives on sports and Christianity (pp. 225–242). New York: Routledge.
  • Crosson, S. (2019). Gaelic Games on film: From silent films to Hollywood hurling, horror and the emergence of Irish cinema. Cork: Cork University Press.
  • Crosson, S. (Ed.). (2020). Sport, film, and national culture. New York: Routledge.
  • Croteau, D., & Hoynes, W. (2003). Media society: Industries, images and audiences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
  • Cummins, R. G. (2006). Sports fiction: Critical and empirical perspectives. In A. A. Raney & J. Bryant (Eds.), Handbook of sports and media (pp. 131–146). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  • Cunningham, J. (2004). Hungarian Cinema: From coffee house to multiplex. London: Wallflower Press.
  • Dahlén, P. (2020). Sport and national culture in Swedish film. In S. Crosson (Ed.), Sport, film, and national culture (pp. 94–111). New York: Routledge.
  • Denzin, N. D. (2002). Reading race: Hollywood and the cinema of racial violence. London: Sage.
  • Dickerson, G. E. (1991). The cinema of baseball: Images of America, 1929–1989. Westport, CT: Meckler.
  • Didinger, R., & Macnow, G. (2009). The ultimate book of sports movies: Featuring the 100 greatest sports films of all time. Philadelphia, PA: Running Press.
  • Dolan, P., & Connolly, J. (Eds.). (2017). Sport and national identities: Globalization and conflict. New York: Routledge.
  • Elmwood, V. A. (2008). “Just some bum from the neighborhood”: The resolution of post–civil rights tension and heavyweight public sphere discourse in Rocky. In R. Briley, M. K. Schoenecke, & D. A. Carmichael (Eds.), All-stars and movie stars: Sports in film and history (pp. 172–198). Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
  • Engle, J. (2015). Surfing in the movies: A critical history. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.
  • Englert, B. (2018). The Hollywood sports film—Visualizing hidden and familiar aspects of American sport. Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, 43(2), 165–180.
  • Fodor, P. (2017). Erasing, rewriting, and propaganda in the Hungarian sport films of the 1950s. Hungarian Historical Review, 6(2), 328–354.
  • Free, M. (2012, July 7–9). Envy, jealousy, guilt and the construction of whiteness in contemporary Hollywood sport films. Paper presented at the Images of Whiteness Conference, Mansfield College, Oxford University. https://dspace.mic.ul.ie/bitstream/handle/10395/2463/Free%2C%20M.%20%282012%29%20Envy%2C%20Jealousy%2C%20Guilt%20and%20the....pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y
  • Friedman, L. D. (2020). Sports movies (Quick takes: Movies and popular culture). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
  • Garioni, C. (2017). Fuori campo—Il cinema racconta lo sport. Rome: Delos Digital.
  • Giardina, M. D., & McCarthy, C. (2005). The popular racial order of urban America: Sport, identity, and the politics of culture. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 5(2), 145–173.
  • Glynn, S. (2018). The British football film. Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Glynn, S. (2020). Cricket, film, and British national identity: On a sticky wicket? In S. Crosson (Ed.), Sport, film, and national culture (pp. 161–174). New York: Routledge.
  • Good, H. (1996). Diamonds in the dark: America, baseball, and the movies. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
  • Grainger, A., Newman, J., & Andrews, D. (2006). Sport, the media and the construction of race. In A. Raney & B. Jennings (Eds.), Handbook of sports and media (pp. 447–467). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  • Grindon, L. (1996). Body and soul: The structure of meaning in the boxing film genre. Cinema Journal, 35(4), 54–69.
  • Grindon, L. (2011). Knockout: The boxer and boxing in American cinema. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
  • Gronmaier, D. (2023) The US Sports Film: A Genre of American Dream Time. Berlin: De Gruyte.
  • Henley, M. (2020). Netball and national identity in Aotearoa New Zealand cinema newsreels 1930–1959: “There’s a new life in the sporting world.” In S. Crosson (Ed.), Sport, film, and national culture (pp. 177–194). New York: Routledge.
  • Hill, J. (2005). Sport stripped bare: Deconstructing working-class masculinity in “This Sporting Life.” Men and Masculinities, 7(4), 405–423.
  • Jones, G. (2005). “Down on the floor and give me ten sit-ups”: British sports feature film. Film & History, 35(2), 29–40.
  • Jordan, C. (2003). Movies and the Reagan presidency: Success and ethics. Westport, CT: Praeger.
  • Jouan-Westlund, A. (2006). L’imaginaire populaire Franco-Américain dans les Triplettes De Belleville. The French Review, 79(6), 1195–1205.
  • Kibby, M. D. (1998). Nostalgia for the masculine: Onward to the past in sports films of the eighties. Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 7(1), 16–28.
  • King, C. R. (2006). Vanishing points: Reframing Indianness in recent sport documentaries. In C. R. King and D. J. Leonard (Eds.), Visual economies of/in motion: Sport and film (cultural critique) (pp. 121–134). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
  • King, C. R., & Leonard, D. J. (Eds.). (2006). Visual economies of/in motion: Sport and film (cultural critique). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
  • Leab, D. J. (1979). The blue collar ethnic in bicentennial America: Rocky (1976). In J. E. O’Connor & M. A. Jackson (Eds.), American history/American film: Interpreting the Hollywood image (pp. 257–272). New York: Ungar.
  • Lichtenfeld, E. (2014). “I, of the tiger”: Self and self-obsession in the Rocky series. In C. Holmlund (Ed.), The ultimate Stallone reader: Sylvester Stallone as star, icon, auteur (pp. 75–97). London: Wallflower Press.
  • Lieberman, V. (2014). Sports heroines on film: A critical study of cinematic women athletes, coaches and owners. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.
  • Lin, T.-Y. (2020). Reconstructing Taiwanese national identity in the sports film: Small nation, sports and cultural heterogeneity. In S. Crosson (Ed.), Sport, film, and national culture (pp. 224–236). New York: Routledge.
  • Lindner, K. (2011). Bodies in action: Female athleticism on the cinema screen. Feminist Media Studies, 11(3), 321–345.
  • Manchel, F. (1980). Great sports movies. New York: Franklin Watts.
  • McDougall, A. (2017). Eyes on the ball: Screening football in East German cinema. Studies in Eastern European Cinema, 8(1), 4–18.
  • McKernan, L. (1996). Sport and the first films. In C. Williams (Ed.), Cinema: The beginnings and the future (pp. 107–116). London: University of Westminster Press.
  • Miller, T. (1990). The dawn of an imagined community: Australian sport on film. Sporting Traditions, 7(1), 48–59.
  • Miller, T. (1994). Film. In W. Vamplew, K. Moore, J. O’Hara, R. Cashman, & I. F. Jobling (Eds.), The Oxford companion to Australian sport (2nd ed.) (pp. 163–165). Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
  • Mosher, S. D. (1983). The white dreams of God: The mythology of sport films. Arena Review, 7(2), 15–19.
  • Nilsson, J. (2000). Take me back to the ball game: Nostalgia and hegemonic masculinity in Field of Dreams. Canadian Review of American Studies, 30(1), 52–72
  • Oriard, M. (1982). Dreaming of heroes: American sports fiction, 1868–1980. Chicago: Nelson-Hall.
  • Oriard, M. (2001). King football: Sport and spectacle in the golden age of radio and newsreels, movies and magazines, the weekly and the daily press. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
  • Paino, T. D. (2001). Hoosiers in a different light: Forces of change v. the power of nostalgia. Journal of Sport History, 28(1), 63–80.
  • Pearson, D. W., Curtis, R. L., Haney, C. A., & Zhang, J. J. (2003). Sport films: Social dimensions over time, 1930–1995. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 27(2), 145–161.
  • Pearson, D. W., & Lam, E. T. C. (2015). Sport theme feature film analysis: A complimentary instructional technique within sport management. Journal of Physical Education and Sports Management, 2(2), 26–40.
  • Place-Verghnes, F. (2007). Douce France? Les triplettes de Belleville, de Sylvain Chomet. In P. Floquet (Ed.), CinémAction: “CinémAnimationS” (pp. 97–103). Paris: Corlet.
  • Poulton, E. (2006). “Lights, camera, aggro!” Readings of “celluloid hooliganism.” Sport in Society, 9(3), 403–422.
  • Poulton, E., & Roderick, M. (2008). Introducing sport in films. Sport in Society, 11(2–3), 107–116.
  • Poulton, E., & Roderick, M. (Eds.). (2009). Sport in films. New York: Routledge.
  • Ransom, A. J. (2014). Bollywood goes to the stadium: Gender, national identity, and sport film in Hindi. Journal of Film and Video, 66(4), 34–49.
  • Redhead, S. (2007). This sporting life: The realism of the football factory. Soccer and Society, 8(1), 90–108.
  • Regester, C. (2003). From the gridiron and the boxing ring to the cinema screen: The African American athlete in pre-1950 cinema. Sport in Society, 6(2–3), 269–292.
  • Rodríguez Díaz, Á. (2010). Spain’s social values through film: Films about sports. In P. Dine & S. Crosson (Eds.), Sport, representation and evolving identities in Europe (pp. 119–140). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
  • Romaguera i Ramió, J. (2003). Presencia del deporte en el cine español, un primer inventario. Sevilla: Fundación Andalucía Olímpica y Consejo Superior de Deportes.
  • Roubach, S. (2007). In the name of the father, the daughter and Eddie Scrap: Trinitarian theology in Million Dollar Baby. Journal of Religion and Film, 11(1). https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol11/iss1/2/
  • Rowe, D. (1998). If you film it, will they come? Sports on film. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 22(4), 350–359.
  • Rowe, D. (2004). Sport, culture and the media (2nd ed.). Berkshire, U.K.: Open University Press.
  • Sarris, A. (1980). Why sports movies don’t work. Film Comment, 16(6), 49–53.
  • Sheppard, S. N. (2020). Sporting Blackness: Race, embodiment, and critical muscle memory on screen. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Sheppard, S. N., & Vogan, T. (Eds.). (2020). Sporting realities: Critical readings of the sports documentary. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
  • Sklar, R. (1976). Movie-made America: A cultural history of American movies. London: Vintage.
  • Sobchack, V. (1997). Baseball in the post-American cinema, or life in the minor leagues. In A. Baker & T. Boyd (Eds.), Out of bounds: Sports, media and the politics of identity (pp. 175–198). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  • Springwood, C. F. (1996). Cooperstown to Dyersville: A geography of baseball. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
  • Streible, D. (2008). Fight pictures: A history of boxing and early cinema. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Sullivan, D. B. (2006). Broadcast television and the game of packaging sports. In A. A. Raney & J. Bryant (Eds.), Handbook of sports and media (pp. 131–146). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  • Thomas, M. W. (2020). Contesting visions of Ethiopia in two Amharic sports films: Between film festivals and local commercial cinema. In S. Crosson (Ed.), Sport, film, and national culture (pp. 206–223). New York: Routledge.
  • Tomasulo, F. P. (2007). 1976: Movies and cultural contradictions. In L. D. Friedman (Ed.), American cinema of the 1970s: Themes and variations (pp. 157–181). Oxford: Berg.
  • Tomlinson, A. (1996). Sports movies and the study of sport—comments on teaching and the hermeneutic. In J. O’Neill, E. Murdoch, & S. Fleming (Eds.), Physical education, sport and leisure: A collection of working papers (pp. 57–76). Eastbourne, U.K.: Chelsea School Research Centre.
  • Tomlinson, A. (1999). Images of sport—Situating Chariots of Fire. In A. Tomlinson (Ed.), The game’s up: Essays in the cultural analysis of sport, leisure and popular culture (pp. 233–246). Aldershot, U.K.: Arena, Ashgate Publishing.
  • Tudor, D. V. (1997). Hollywood’s vision of team sports: Heroes, race, and gender. New York: Garland Publishing.
  • Vogan, T. (2014). Keepers of the flame: NFL Films and the rise of sports media. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
  • Vogan, T. (2020). The boxing film: A cultural and transmedia history (screening sports). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
  • Wallenfeldt, J. H. (1989). Sports movies. New York: CineBooks.
  • Wenner, L. A. (Ed.). (1998) MediaSport. New York: Routledge.
  • Whannel, G. (2000). Sport and the media. In J. Coakley & E. Dunning (Eds.), Handbook of sports studies (pp. 291–308). London: Sage.
  • Whannel, G. (2008). Winning and losing respect: Narratives of identity in sport films. Sport in Society, 11(2–3), 195–208.
  • Wiedenfeld, G. (2016). The conservative backlash argument controverted: Carnivalesque, comedy, and respect in Rocky. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 33(2), 168–180.
  • Wiedenfeld, G. (2022). Hollywood Sports Movies and the American Dream. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.
  • Wilkinson, R. (1984). American tough: The tough-guy tradition and American character. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
  • Williams, R. (2006). Sports cinema—100 movies: The best of Hollywood’s athletic heroes, losers, myths, and misfits. Pompton Plains, NJ: Limelight Editions.
  • Wood, C., & Benigni, V. (2006). The coverage of sports on cable TV. In A. A. Raney & J. Bryant (Eds.), Handbook of sports and media (pp. 147–169). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  • Zucker, H. M., & Babich, L. J. (1987) Sports films: A complete reference. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.

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