Sport and Identity in France

Philip Dine is Senior Lecturer in French at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He has published widely on representations of the French colonial empire, including particularly decolonization, in fields ranging from children's literature to professional sport. Other published research includes a history of French rugby football, as part of a broader reflection on leisure and popular culture in France. This volume is one of the outcomes of a thematic project on sport and identity in France and Europe for which he acted as coordinator and which was funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (2006-2009).

Contents: Horse racing as elite tradition and mass entertainment - The French invention - and manipulation - of the Olympic Games - Cycle road racing as industrial metaphor and heritage industry - Roland(-)Garros from the pioneering aviator to the Open tennis championship - Ocean racing from Alain Gerbault to Florence Arthaud - Looking for liberty - and finding France - in the desert, the mountains and the post-colonial city - Combat sports from the fencing academy to the streets of the banlieue - Rugby from provincial nostalgia to pragmatic cosmopolitanism - Football and the competing claims of locality, ethnicity and fidelity.

«Dine (...) has produced a significant contribution to understanding the central role sports have played in negotiating French identities over the last century and a half.» (Corry Cropper, H-France Review 154, 2012/12)