In “The World Arena,” I argue that a competitive, athletic ethos pervades twentieth-century literature, as writers found in international sport an image of modernity itself. For the diverse writers of this new genre of “athletic literature,” sport reflected the global political conflicts that defined the century as well as the international cultural field where literary success itself was won. To trace the origins of this genre, my project recovers the history of the Olympic Art Competitions of 1912 to 1948, when writers and artists competed for medals at the Olympic Games. My research draws from the archives of the Olympic Studies Centre in Lausanne and my own digital database of Olympic results, using rulebooks, official reports, and exhibition catalogues to reveal the hidden history of the “Pentathlon of the Muses.” The full list of roughly 300 judges, 3,000 competitors, and countless festival contributors reveals the widespread popularity and prestige of the athletic arts in the modernist period, as artists from old-guard academies and avant-garde movements around the world took the field against one another. Along the way, the Olympics inspired writers and artists at large to model themselves after athletes: determined the play their own games strategically, they showed off their training, struck up rivalries, represented their countries before international crowds, and touted their victories. Across studies of writers including H.D., Robert Graves, Jean Cocteau, Ernest Hemingway, Ralph Ellison, Marianne Moore, James Joyce, Mulk Raj Anand, and Kamau Brathwaite—along with artists and musicians including Laura Knight, George Grosz, Miles Davis, Bunya Koh, and David Alfaro Siqueiros—“The World Arena” determines what it took to win Olympic gold in the arts and what it takes to become a world champion of world literature.
The Centre for Olympic Studies & the Globalisation of Sport of the University of Lausanne and its director Prof. Patrick Clastres are pleased to invite you to the second session of the webinar Building bridges within and outside the history of sport 2023-2024 which will take place on Thursday 14 December 2023, from 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm (Paris-Zurich UTC+1).
The guest speaker will be Miles Osgood, PhD in English studies at Harvard University (Massachusetts) and Lecturer at Stanford University (California). He will present his doctoral thesis defended in 2019 The World Arena: The olympic art competitions and the sport of international litterature. Miles Osgood's discussant will be Beatriz Garcia, Senior Research Fellow in Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool (England) and Member of the Culture and Olympic Heritage Commission at the International Olympic Committee.
To follow the webinar, please register with Raphaël Benbouhou: raphael.benbouhou@unil.ch.
A Zoom link with the access code will be provided to follow the conference.
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Le Centre d’études olympiques & de la globalisation du sport de l’Université de Lausanne et son directeur le Prof. Patrick Clastres ont le plaisir de vous inviter à la deuxième séance du webinaire Building bridges within and outside the history of sport 2023-2024 qui aura lieu le jeudi 14 décembre 2023, 16h30 à 18h30 (heure Paris-Zurich UTC+1).
Le conférencier invité sera Miles Osgood, Docteur en études anglaises à l’Université d’Harvard (Massachussets) et Lecturer à l’Université de Stanford (Californie). Il présentera sa thèse de doctorat soutenue en 2019 L’arène globale: les compétitions olympiques d’art et la littérature internationale comme sport. Le discutant de Miles Osgood sera Beatriz Garcia, Senior Research Fellow en communication et médias à l’Université de Liverpool (Angleterre), Membre de la commission de la culture et du patrimoine olympique du Comité International Olympique.
Pour suivre le webinaire, veuillez vous inscrire auprès de Raphaël Benbouhou : raphael.benbouhou@unil.ch.
Un lien Zoom, avec le code d'accès, vous sera fourni pour suivre la conférence.