Sport as Text: Global Sport Literature, A Conversation with Dr. Adam Winkel

As a cultural phenomenon, sport commands worldwide attention from fans, players, clubs, governments, corporations, and the media. From domestic leagues to global mega-events, sport unites international audiences while simultaneously connecting to local identities. Every sporting event, no matter the level, contains its own narrative, which makes the athletic experience a compelling literary subject. How do authors contend with the difficulties of transforming athletic movement and the experience of athletes, teams, and fans into the written word? What distinguishes sport literature from other forms of sport media? Sport has entertained readers and viewers since ancient times, but sport as text has consistently been met with skepticism as “unserious.”

In this presentation, Dr. Winkel will discuss representations of sport in literature and film. He will begin with a brief overview of the history of sport literature and several examples of seminal sport texts from around the world before examining how the study of sport literature has evolved as an academic discipline, especially since the foundation of the Sport Literature Association in 1983. Finally, he will discuss several case studies from his area of specialty: sport literature from Spain during the Franco dictatorship. While sport, especially soccer, was used by the Franco regime as a propaganda tool and as an “escape valve” for spectators, Spanish novelists, poets, and short-story writers approached sport through the tools of literature to both celebrate and question its role in Spanish society.

Dr. Adam L. Winkel is Associate Professor of Spanish at High Point University in North Carolina. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed his graduate studies at Columbia University. He has published on Spanish novel, theater, and film, and his research on Spanish sport, narrative, and society has appeared in The International Journal of the History of Sport, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, TEXT, and in the edited volume Intersections of Sport and Society in Creative Writing (2023). His teaching and research interests include: post-civil war Spanish literature and cultural studies, sport and culture, and urban theory and cultural practices. Since 2018, he has served as the treasurer of the Association for Hispanic Humanities (AHH), and he is the 2025-26 President of the Sport Literature Association (SLA).

Originally published at smacminor.nd.edu.