"New Books in Sports" Interview with Seán Crosson

Hello colleagues,

I am writing to let you know about our latest “New Books in Sports” interview with  Seán Crosson, leader of the Sport and Exercise Research Group at NUI Galway, co-director of the MA in Sports Journalism and Communication, and Professor at the Huston School of Film and Digital Media.  He is also the author of Gaelic Games on Film: From Silent Films to Hollywood Hurling, Horror, and the Emergence of Irish Cinema (Cork University Press, 2019).

Please find our conversation here: https://newbooksnetwork.com/sean-crosson-gaelic-games-on-film-cork-up-2019/

In Gaelic Games on Film, Crosson traces out the use of Irish sports in Irish, American, and British cinema.  His analysis engages with different kinds of cinema, including dramas, silent and horror films, as well as non-fiction accounts in documentaries and newsreels.  Many of these accounts challenged the normative description of hurling and Gaelic football presented by the Gaelic Athletic Association.  Depictions of Gaelic games in American and British films relied upon and subverted stereotypes about the Irish, especially their supposed propensity to violence, to both situate Irish nationhood within its international context with its closest neighbours and to manage the integration of Irish migrants leaving the country in great numbers in the middle of the twentieth century.

Their Irish cinema counterparts, who with few exceptions took to cinema work a little later, following the redevelopment of the Irish film industry after independence, used hurling and Gaelic football to both articulate and critique notions of Irish masculinity, religiosity, and conservativism.  Here Crosson points out that the popularity and legibility of sports contributed to the development of Irish cultural institutions such as the National Film Institute of Ireland and Gael Linn, who both produced newsreels of the Gaelic Games to sell to cinemas around the country and benefitted from the popularity of those movies.

Listeners interested in seeing some clips of the films in question can watch another interview with Crosson at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnrwu7LfWWU

Crosson’s work offers innovative perspectives on the interplay between histories of sport and cinema.  This book will appeal to readers interested in Irish, sports, and film studies.

The "New Books in Sports" network features discussions with sports scholars about their most recent books.  It is a part of the "New Books Network," a consortium of podcasts exploring recent publications across a wide range of fields.  The podcasts can also be accessed via iTunes where a free subscription option is available.

Please contact me off-list if you have any recent book suggestions.

Best,

Keith Rathbone

Lecturer, Macquarie University

Keith.Rathbone@mq.edu.au

@keithrathbone

Hello colleagues,

I am writing to let you know about our latest “New Books in Sports” interview with  Seán Crosson, leader of the Sport and Exercise Research Group at NUI Galway, co-director of the MA in Sports Journalism and Communication, and Professor at the Huston School of Film and Digital Media.  He is also the author of Gaelic Games on Film: From Silent Films to Hollywood Hurling, Horror, and the Emergence of Irish Cinema (Cork University Press, 2019).

Please find our conversation here: https://newbooksnetwork.com/sean-crosson-gaelic-games-on-film-cork-up-2019/

In Gaelic Games on Film, Crosson traces out the use of Irish sports in Irish, American, and British cinema.  His analysis engages with different kinds of cinema, including dramas, silent and horror films, as well as non-fiction accounts in documentaries and newsreels.  Many of these accounts challenged the normative description of hurling and Gaelic football presented by the Gaelic Athletic Association.  Depictions of Gaelic games in American and British films relied upon and subverted stereotypes about the Irish, especially their supposed propensity to violence, to both situate Irish nationhood within its international context with its closest neighbours and to manage the integration of Irish migrants leaving the country in great numbers in the middle of the twentieth century.

Their Irish cinema counterparts, who with few exceptions took to cinema work a little later, following the redevelopment of the Irish film industry after independence, used hurling and Gaelic football to both articulate and critique notions of Irish masculinity, religiosity, and conservativism.  Here Crosson points out that the popularity and legibility of sports contributed to the development of Irish cultural institutions such as the National Film Institute of Ireland and Gael Linn, who both produced newsreels of the Gaelic Games to sell to cinemas around the country and benefitted from the popularity of those movies.

Listeners interested in seeing some clips of the films in question can watch another interview with Crosson at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnrwu7LfWWU

Crosson’s work offers innovative perspectives on the interplay between histories of sport and cinema.  This book will appeal to readers interested in Irish, sports, and film studies.

The "New Books in Sports" network features discussions with sports scholars about their most recent books.  It is a part of the "New Books Network," a consortium of podcasts exploring recent publications across a wide range of fields.  The podcasts can also be accessed via iTunes where a free subscription option is available.

Please contact me off-list if you have any recent book suggestions.

Best,

Keith Rathbone

Lecturer, Macquarie University

Keith.Rathbone@mq.edu.au

@keithrathbone